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AT THE SUPREME 
WAR COUNCIL 




Keystone View Co., Inc. 



MARSHAL FOCH 



AT THE SUPREME 
WAR COUNCIL 



BY 



CAPTAIN PETER E. WRIGHT 

LATE ASSISTANT SBCRETART, SUPREME 
WAR COUNCIL 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
TLbc Tknicfterbocfter press 

1921 






Copyright, 192 1 

by 
Peter E. Wright 

Printed in the United States of America 




AUG 2U ly^l 



0)G1.A624025 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 

Though it has hardly been detected by the 
many and hostile critics of this book, my main 
object in writing it was to establish the truth on a 
number of points: for a nimiber of plain truths 
about the war had been obscured for the public, 
or rather never revealed to it, at all. Many of my 
views, here expressed, are, and perhaps always will 
be, debatable: for men always have, and always 
will, argue for ever about battles, and no estimate 
of a himian character can be fixed or final. But 
there is one fact which is unshaken and imshak- 
able, and which was no less a shock to the public 
than it had been to myself when it came to my 
knowledge. In this war we, the Allies, were big 
and our enemies small during almost the whole 
contest. Yet they held out for four years, and 
nearly won. 

Now, with great deference, given my himible 
military rank, I find a moral in this, of great im- 
port to my own f ellow-cotmtrymen, and perhaps of 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 

tremendous import to their kinsmen in the United 
States. That moral is rather commonplace, like 
all morals, and it is that you cannot improvise in 
war: like all other vast practical enterprises it 

^ needs preparation to be successful. The Anglo- 
Saxons have never really believed this, and re- 

I mained obstinately opposed to, and contemptuous 
of, military life. They are likely to be confirmed 
in their error by their success: for now the Teu- 
tonic and Slav rivals have collapsed, they stand 
almost as the pre-eminent race. If they can win 
wars without being mihtary, it is hardly likely they 
will come to think that it is necessary to be military 
in order to win wars. 

This little book aims at telling them that, in 
spite of a vast preponderance in nttmbers as well 
as in all other forms of military strength, they 
nearly lost. Reflecting sincerely, and, I hope, 
without immodesty, on the great British efforts, it 
seems to me that the evil of improvisation, and the 
advantage of preparation, do not lie on the sur- 
face, and cannot be easily detected. A nation of 
sportsmen and business men can rapidly create all 
that makes a great army, men, officers, material, 
and enthusiasm. One thing, however, cannot be 
created offhand and at will, but is the fruit of long 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 

efforts and the work of generations — command, 
great leaders, and the right conceptions of strategy. 
The greatest problem and practice we had ever 
given our Regular Army in Europe was handling 
four skeleton divisions at autimm manoeuvres: we 
then required them to handle sixty real divisions 
on a real battle-field. It was like asking men em- 
ployed to build cottages, suddenly to construct a 
cathedral. Hence the long duration of the war. 

Paradoxical and unpalatable as this truth may 
be, my little book shows that the Allies ultimately 
won when they were weaker than their adversary, 
after failing to beat him for years diiring which 
they were much stronger: it also endeavours to 
show the simple reason, that they at last foimd the 
right method of command and the right com- 
mander, Foch. But Foch and Foch's 1918 battle 
is not the product of chance, any more than 
Michael Angelo or the Sistine frescoes are. He is 
the outcome of a long national effort, of a imiversal 
sacrifice to military life, of a passionate conviction 
that military command is one of the highest arts, 
of the devotion of the finest French minds to this 
profession, of the imspoken resolve of generations 
to be ready for this struggle. Only at this price 
can the military genius that decides the fate of 



> 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 

nations be produced: and this idea, implicit in my 
book, and perhaps as disagreeable to most Ameri- 
cans as it is to most Englishmen, I offer to the 
serious consideration of the American public. 

Peter E. Wright. 
May, 1921. 



CONTENTS 



I. — Foundation of the Supreme War Council 9 

II. — The Plan of Campaign for 1918 . . 53 

III. — The Battle of St. Quentin 

Appendix A . . . . 

Appendix B 

Appendix C . . . , 



III 
151 
183 
191 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Marshal Foch Frontispiece 

General Gough 

Major-General Sir Frederick B. Maurice 

General Robertson . 

Marshal Sir Douglas Haig 

General P6tain 

Rt. Hon. David Lloyd George 

Colonel Charles Repington . 



26 
42 

58 

90 

122 

156 
190 



AT THE 
SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 



FOUNDATION OF THE SUPREME 
WAR COUNCIL 



Foundation of the Supreme 
War Council 

A well-known military writer, and a com- 
batant in the Great War, Major Grasset,' has 
lately made a collection of extracts from the two 
great works of Foch, written more than twenty 
years ago, which are rather too voluminous for 
the ordinary reader, though even before the war 
curious inquirers, without the least direct interest 
in military affairs, had been attracted by books 
which treat war from such a philosophical height. 
These short extracts, published by Major Grasset 
in book form, reveal the fiery disposition and calcu- 
lating brain which Foch always points out as the 
mark of a military leader. But prefaced to these 
extracts is a short study of the Hfe of Foch. Now 
this is of imusual interest, because Major Grasset, 

^ Precepts and Judgments of Marshal Foch, by Major 
Grasset : translated by Hilaire Belloc. (Chapman & Hall.) 

9 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

from the text itself, has evidently obtained his in- 
formation from the innermost circles of the French 
General Staff; some expressions, some phrases ring 
very like those of Foch himself: the resemblance 
can hardly be fortuitous. But, if not from Foch 
himself, then the information must come from the 
small group of officers who have always been imme- 
diately next to him while he was in any position of 
high command, for there are some facts, and es- 
pecially some dates, which can only be known to 
this group. And as some of this information is 
new, and throws a new light on some of the great 
events in which our armies took part, and especially 
the battle of St. Quentin, it is of the highest in- 
terest. Having been at the Supreme War Council 
during the winter 1 91 7-19 1 8 as Assistant Secretary, 
I can tell at first hand and with nimierical precision 
the events of that period which he relates at second 
hand and vaguely.^ 

The world knows Foch only at the height of his 
achievements, when he drove the Germans before 
him, and would have destroyed them altogether 
had not his final and fatal blow been stopped by 

^ My authority for my statements has been questioned : 
a fuller description of my functions will be found in Ap- 
pendix A. 

10 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

the armistice; it knows him at the moment of his 
success when his position was at its highest, but it 
knows little of him in adversity when he himself 
was at his greatest. This preface of Major Gras- 
set's book tells us something, but not enough, of 
those earlier battles in which he rose, between 
August 4 and October 4, 19 14, from the command 
of a corps to the command of an army group, and 
that the most important, and found himself, in the 
third month of the war, commanding the generals 
who had commanded him during the first month. 
During the first period of the war he was far greater 
than in the last, when the eyes of all the world were 
fixed on him; when he took all the tricks, but held 
all the cards. During the first period he held no 
cards at all, but won all the same. Then, as later, 
the words of the greatest of ancient historians, 
used by him of the man he admired most, are 
applicable to Foch. "He gave proof of a power 
and a penetration that was natural, wonderful, and 
infallible. When any crisis arose, however little 
he expected it, and without any examination, a 
view of the situation, far superior to that of any 
one else, sprang from him at once, and he predicted 
the subsequent course of events with no less cer- 
tainty. His exposition of his own plans was most 

II 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

lucid; his criticism of other men's schemes con- 
summate; and however incalculable the result 
might seem, he always knew what would succeed 
and what would not. In a word, imiting the 
deepest intellectual grasp with a lightning rapidity 
of decision, he was the model man of action."^ 

Major Grasset gives us only a slight sketch of 
Foch's earlier feats. 

At his second battle, the Trou6e de Charmes in 
Lorraine, August 24, 19 14, he and Dubail defended 
the line of the Meurthe against odds at least ten 
to one. The Mame was his third battle. On the 
last day of August he was put at the head of the 
Ninth Army by Marshal Joffre. This army was to 
hold the French centre in the first battle of the 
Mame, and it was against the centre that the main 
attack of the Germans was to be expected. Foch 
had 70,000 men : Von Bulow and Von Hausen, who 
attacked him (or, rather, who faced him, for he at- 
tacked them at once, as soon as they came within 
his reach on September 6) , had 300,000 men. Thus 
the plan of the battle hung on whether Foch could 
hold these odds, while Maimoury and Lord French 
enveloped the German right ; if the Germans could 
have rolled him over and cut the long Allied line 

^ Thucydides, i., ch. 138. 

12 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

from Verdun to Paris in two, they would not have 
been even endangered by this enveloping move- 
ment, for they would have destroyed most of the 
French armies. So the whole plan of the Marne 
himg on Foch. It was a speculation by Joffre that 
his lieutenant could win the odds of more than four 
to one. "Victory resides in will," writes Foch. 
"A battle won is a battle in which one has not ad- 
mitted oneself defeated." Von Billow's official 
report has been published, and we know that, for 
all his material superiority, he was a beaten man 
before the battle began. Twenty years before, his 
spiritually superior adversary, then Colonel Foch, 
had written: "Victory always comes to those who 
merit it by their greater strength of will and 
intelligence." 

There are many sayings attributed to Foch at 
the Marne, but most of them are bom of the French 
love for flowery rhetoric, not Foch's flinty, scientific 
brain, though, like flint, the hard impact of events 
can strike the brightest spark from it. There is one, 
however, which is not only true, but very like him. 
On the last day of the battle, as he watched the 
Germans come on for the seventh time to the at- 
tack of Mondement, the key of the French position, 
which the Prussian Guard had taken time after 

13 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

time, only to lose it again every time Foch counter- 
attacked, he said cheerfully to his staff: "Well, 
gentlemen, they must be in great straits some- 
where or other if they are in such a desperate hurry 
here." He had divined rightly: Maimoury was 
creeping behind Von Kluck, and Franchet d'Es- 
perey behind Von Biilow and Von Hausen, and 
Foch, as he guessed, only had to cling on for a few 
more hours to be safe. The Germans did finally 
pierce the French centre by the capture of La Fere 
Champenoise on the last day of the battle ; but Foch, 
though he had no reserves of any kind left, would 
not concede it. He took the 42nd Division out of 
the line, risked leaving a gap in the French front, 
and stormed La F^re just as the Germans were 
sitting down to dinner, thinking the battle was 
over and won. 

Foch had only one week between the first and 
seventh of September to inspire the Ninth Army, 
largely composed of defeated and retreating troops, 
with his determination in that desperate struggle. 
Almost at once he was given something still more 
difficult to do, and he took up this fourth command 
even more swiftly. In the beginning of October 
the fall of Antwerp, the fortress which protected 
the whole of the Allies' left flank, was suddenly 

14 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

seen to be imminent, and another catastrophe 
impending. Joffre immediately turned to Foch. 
Late in the evening on October 4, Foch, who was 
at Chalons, was told over the telephone that he 
had been appointed commander of the north- 
western army group . He left Chalons at ten o' clock 
in the night. Between four and six o'clock next 
morning he had given their instructions to his army 
commanders, and at nine o'clock was directing the 
furious battle raging round Lens. M. Poincare 
said in the speech he made on Foch's admission to 
the Academy that it was his view, single and alone 
among those of all the Allied commanders, that the 
British, few in number and battle-worn as they 
were, could still hold Ypres, that gave our troops 
the chance of winning the first battle of Ypres, the 
crowning victory of 19 14, the glorious year of the 
war for both the Allies. This was the Foch of 1 9 1 4. 
But subsequent years of the war are far less 
creditable to the Allies than 1914, for never again 
during the remaining four years of the war, except 
for six months in 191 8, were the Central Powers 
to be superior on the Western European front, and 
that superiority not only short, but slight; and 
dviring that period in 191 8, the Germans very 
nearly won the war. The Entente were brought to 

15 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

the edge of defeat by disregarding the advice of 
Foch, and again saved by him. We can never 
justly allot the merit of winning the war, or learn 
the errors that prevented us gaining it far earlier, 
or profit by the lessons of the struggle, unless we 
make the effort to discard our vanity and imder- 
stand the truth. For struggle there will be gain in 
the future, if not in the immediate present; the 
evil of war is too inherent to be extirpated by the 
new, fashionable, but delusive ideas with which 
some hope to cut it out. 

For a period that can almost be called of years 
the British and French were more than 7 to 4 to 
the Germans in men on the Western front, and 
almost double in material. In January, 191 7, the 
Allies had 178 divisions on the French front to the 
German 127, which, allowing for the smaller size 
of the German division, gives more than the pro- 
portion mentioned. 

The dissolution of the Russian army which began 
after the Revolution went on rapidly dtiring 19 17. 
But in May, 1916, the Russians had had along their 
European front 140 divisions of infantry — each 
division half as great again as a German division, 
and a quarter as great again as an Austrian — and 
33}4 divisions of cavalry. One portion of this vast 

16 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

army, known as the Northern group, had consisted 
of 45 infantry divisions and 13 cavahy divisions. 
This Northern group had sunk, in January, 19 18, to 
175,000 men all told, of which 15,000 only were in 
the fighting line ; and the rest of the Russian armies 
had shrunk in the same proportion. At one rail- 
road point during the winter, 10,000 deserters had 
been coimted daily going home; and this collapse 
left the Roumanian army with a fighting strength 
of 18 infantry, and 2 cavalry divisions exposed, 
unprotected, and helpless, and eventually driven to 
submission; the same army which, after the defeat 
of 191 6, had sufficiently recovered themselves to 
inflict a severe defeat on the Germans in 19 17. So 
towards the end of 191 7 both Russia and Roumania 
could be taken as out of it. The new ally, America, 
had hardly begun to come in — in December, 191 7, 
there were only 3^ American divisions in France, 
each of them being, however, two or three times 
as big as a German division. But in the interval 
between the exit of Russia, an empire of more than 
160 million people, and the entrance of America, a 
coimtry of more than 100 millions, the Allies were 
compelled to carry on the war with diminished 
forces. This question, therefore, naturally put 

itself to their statesmen, whether or not they could 
2 17 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

get through this difficiilt interval. The Germans 
might be strong enough to snatch a victory during 
this period of our weakness, in which case it was the 
duty of our statesmen to make peace while still 
imdefeated; or, on the contrary, we might be able 
to resist them till the weight of the Americans in- 
clined the balance in their favour, in which case it 
was their duty to resist till that moment. Though 
no peace negotiations were ever contemplated, they 
took stock of their resources. 

The course to be steered towards the end of 191 7 
depended upon obtaining as accurate a calculation 
as possible of the enemy's forces, and of their own, 
leaving out of accoimt Russia and America. To 
the making of this calculation a War Cabinet Com- 
mittee applied itself, concentrating all the figures 
obtainable by the information branches of all the 
Allies. This Committee on Man Power, whose con- 
clusions were to govern the Allied poHcy, reckoned 
these were the forces of the adversaries. 

The combatant strength (not the ration strength) 
of the British and the French in all the existing 
theatres of war — ^in France, Italy, the Balkans, 
Palestine, and Mesopotamia — was 3,700,000 (three 
million, seven hundred thousand) men; the com- 
batant strength of the Germans in all theatres, in- 

18 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

eluding the Russian and Roumanian was 3,400,000, 
(three million, four hundred thousand) men. 
/Therefore Britain and France alone in December, 
191 7, were, and had been for two years, numerically 
stronger than Germany. 

The total of the combatant Allied forces — 
British, French, Italian, Belgian, Portuguese, Ser- 
bian, Greek, and including 85,000 Americans — 
was, in December, 191 7, 5,400,000 (five million, 
four htindred thousand) men. There were no 
Russians or Roumanians reckoned in. But the 
total of the Central Powers — German, Austro- 
Hungarian, Biilgarian, and Turkish — was only 
5,200,000 (five million, two hundred thousand) 
men. This included more than i^ milHons who 
were still on the Russian and Roumanian front. ^ 

The arrival of these last on any theatre might 
create a momentary risk for the Allies, though they 
would still have had a total superiority, but, till 
that transference took place, their nimiber on every 
theatre, in December, 19 17, was higher. In the 
Turkish lands the Allies were as six to five to their 
opponents; in the Balkans as four to three; in Italy 

* The historian can find these and the following totals 
at the end of the report of the Committee on Man Power, 
in the archives of the War Cabinet. 

19 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

as thirteen to eight ; in France still very nearly six 
to foiir. On the Western front, properly under- 
\ stood, stretching from the North Sea to the Adri- 
atic, the number of their field gims were six to five 
of the enemy, and their heavy guns as seven 
to six. Everyivhere the advantage of numbers, 
whether considered together, or, at that date, in 
I any particular place, was theirs. 

How much more, and how crushing, had their 
superiority been when more than 190 (one hundred 
and ninety) Russian and Roumanian divisions — a 
body of men far more ntmierous than the whole 
German army — ^were fighting on their side; yet 
they had failed to win the war. 

The plan of the Allied statesmen, perhaps indeed 
because of their great advantage in nimibers, had 
been to hope for the best. Now enemy reinforce- 
ments of one million bayonets might appear on any 
of their fronts ; for German and Austrian divisions 
had begun to stream westwards. But the plan of 
all of them — except one, Mr. Lloyd George — ^was 
still to hope for the best, till the arrival of the 
Americans decided the war. Even M. Clemenceau, 
the least inert of men, was of this opinion, and in 
I January, 19 18, told the assembled military and 
I political leaders of the alliance, that the date of 

20 



h 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

j victory woiild be the autumn of 1919, for then the 
/ American strength would be at its height. But this 
American giant, though he intended to put forth 
all his strength, only bestirred himself slowly. 
When M. Clemenceau uttered this prognostic 
there were 4^ American divisions in France, huge 
American divisions, much bigger than any Euro- 
pean; but only one of these was in the line, and the 
American Chief of the Staff could then only promise 
^ that there would be four fully trained by July, 
! 1918, eight in October, 1918, and twenty in April, 

1 1919- 

This was the assistance which General Bliss in 

/January, 19 18, was promising to the Allies; but it 

I would not be fair to the Americans to omit saying 

they ultimately gave much more after the mis- 

forttmes of the spring. Both the dispatch and the 

«j training of troops was then accelerated. In Janu- 

; ary, when this estimate was given, there were 4>^ 

' American divisions in France, of which one only 

was trained and in the line. In Jime, 191 8, there 

were 17 in France, of which 7 were trained. On 

November i, 19 18, there were 41 American divi- 

i sions in France and Italy, of which 29 were trained, 

j and had taken over more than 70 miles of front, 

thus enabling Foch to mass the bulk of the French 

21 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

\ forces on the upper Moselle for the death-blow; but 

; for the Armistice, Castelnau, at the head of three 

I French armies, would have burst into the Rhine 

1 valley, and placed himself between Germany and 

I the exhausted German armies who were still being 

. I hammered far away west of the Meuse, and Sedan 

would indeed have been avenged. On Armistice 

\ day there were rather more Americans than British 

on the continent on the Western Front, although 

the rifle strength of the trained .American troops 

was about half our own. 

■- The one statesman who had refused to resign 
himself to this policy, or this absence of policy, was 
i\ Mr. Lloyd George. 

Immediately on commg into power he had in- 
vented a new instrument of government, the War 
Cabinet. This body of four, sitting continuously 
and issuing orders to all the ministries through its 
Secretary, was virtually a dictatorship, and in 
effect a personal dictatorship; and though this is 
as yet unperceived, this concentration of power in 
the one office of the Prime Minister has to some 
degree survived the war; for it is the existence of a 
Secretariat, both in the War Cabinet and the larger 
cabinet, innovation as it is, that makes him almost 
absolute. 

22 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

For in both these small executive bodies there 

are no fixed rules of procedure or methods of voting 

like, for example, at a Board of Directors. In the 

War Cabinet, and apparently in the Cabinet that 

has succeeded it, both the settlement of their 

j; agenda, and, what is still more important, the for- 

1 mulation of their decision, was left in the hands of 

i, 

j the Secretary, largely owing to his skill and in- 

« defatigable industry. The Secretary, therefore, 
without having any wish to do so, must to some 
extent affect their decisions, especially as in many 
or most of their discussions what was their real 
decision remains very doubtful. 

It happens that the only holder there has so far 
been of this post has acted as the assiduous attend- 
ant of the Prime Minister, so that the War Cabi- 
net's Secretariat was very much in effect the Prime 
Minister's Secretariat. Through this Secretary, 
and perhaps without any design, but by the natural 
adoption of so great a convenience, the will of the 
Prime Minister tended to be the will of the War 
[Cabinet. This growth of the Prime Minister's 
I office (to which other causes contributed, such as 

(the selection by him of ministers who had never 
been in the House of Commons, and who, therefore, 
could only consider themselves as chosen by him 

23 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

alone) is the great constitutional change of the war. 
It tends to make the office more and more like an 
American president, absolute, but subject to selec- 
tion every four years. Whatever its defects and 
merits in peace, it is only with this authority for 
immediate and imcontroUed command that the 
war could really be carried on. In war, the Prime 
Minister during the whole day was like a swimmer 
in rough seas — one question after another, like 
charging waves, and no sooner was one breasted 
than another came rolling on, and every question 
requiring a decision without delay, when it was 
always better to risk taking action wrongly than 
ot to act at all. 
) This creation of a central and supreme authority 
/had averted the dangers of 19 17. We had passed 
'■ from one extreme to another. There was a helms- 
man, who, if pluck and energy are the qualities 
most needed by the pilot who is to weather the 
=itorm, has no equal in these virtues, still less a 
\ superior, in the whole history of our Parliament, 
; which, by a singular piece of good fortime, pro- 
l duced him just when we needed him most; the very 
• opposite in this respect of the weak and wavering 
" Mr. Asquith. And there was a new helm of a new 
pattern, to which the whole ship answered at a 

24 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

^ touch. The threat of starvation made by the 
U-boats, the great danger of 191 7, had now been 
averted by the rapid and innumerable edicts of the 
War Cabinet, which in one year had almost trans- 
formed oiir social system. If unity of command 
had done so much at home, it was natural for Mr. 
Lloyd George to think that it might be no less 

; effective abroad, 
i 

For the war did not present itself to the national 
leaders of the Alliance in the same shape as to the 
public, which entertained, and still entertains, the 
flattering idea that we had been struggling against 
immense odds. This was one of the many fictions 
with which it had always been considered neces- 
sary to drug the nation, though their devotion 
always had been equal to any sacrifice, and their 
fortitude to any deprivation ; but the truth was, and 
could not appear as anything else to the leaders, 
that we were big and our adversaries small. For 
years the Germans had stood at bay, surrounded 
by more numerous enemies, who had failed to over- 
come them. 

It therefore might be considered that the Al- 
lied policy had been wrong. Mr. Lloyd George 
thought so and said so, though the other lead- 
ers sitting round the table might be satisfied to 

25 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

wait until the knot iintied itself instead of trying 

j to untie it. 

There was a remarkable likeness between the 
three Premiers — Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and 
Orlando. They all three united in themselves ab- 
solutely contrary qualities. Eloquent men have 
unguarded, unsuspicious, impulsive temperaments, 
and cunning men are inarticulate and ineloquent. 

;But they all three were both incimng and eloquent, 
and the conjimction of these opposites is probably 

.what makes a great parliamentarian, as they all 

j three were. This is perhaps why he is so rare. 
Suspicious and circuitous in their dealings, the most 
persuasive and real rhetoric, that struggles to con- 
vince and win, quite unlike the vapid speech of 
formal public utterance, gushed from them at once. 
I But the British statesman (and Lord Milner 
was the complement of Lloyd George, as if provided 
by nature to supply the natural deficiencies of the 
Prime Minister) surpassed all the others both in 

" tvill and insight ; in will, because they were resolved 
to seize and mould coming events, and not wait 
timidly on their occurrence; in insight, because 
they could see the whole interests of the Alliance 
as well as the British national interest. The 
French statesmen were, without exception, jour- 

I 26 




GENERAL GOUGH 



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FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

j nalists, and far better at discussing than doing. 
Clemenceau was the most amiable of old men, and, 
if a tiger, as he was called, only a stuffed nursery 
tiger, more endearing than formidable. But, 
always quivering with patriotic emotion, he was all 
haste and impiilse, and would apply to a knot 
neither the patient tmderstanding nor steady per- 
severance without which it could not be imra veiled. 

\ In the minds of almost every one sitting roimd the 
red baize table at Versailles, the uppermost thought 
was the security of their own place and the advan- 
tage of their own coimtry. This was transparent 

\ as soon as they opened their mouths. But the 
uppermost thought in Mr. Lloyd George's mind 
•was to find the way out and take it and win the 

,war, whatever he risked. In spite of his oblique 
and subterranean methods; his inveterate taste 

i for low and imscrupulous men ; of the distrust felt 
for him by his favourites, even at the height of 
their favour; of his superficial, slipshod, and hasty 
mind; this determination of character made him, 
without any assumption on his part, the leader of 
^ the Alliance. The half-deified chiefs, whom the 
prostrate Germans worshipped as idols, never 
ceased to proclaim what magniloquently they called 
their will to victory. But none of them ever had it 

■ 27 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

■ like this little Welsh lay preacher and attorney, 
who remained so deeply stamped with the charac- 
teristics of these early occupations, even at this 
sublime elevation of power. 

Now that the Russians and Roumanians were 
out, or going out, the Germans were sure to be equal 
again on the West, and during the summer of 191 8 
to be rather bigger. 

In January, 1917, there had been 127 German 
divisions in France; in December, 19 17, there were 
151 ; in January, 1918, 158. It was like watching a 
river rise, which rises only inch by inch, but which 
may, after a certain level, flood and sweep away 
everything. After keeping off so many enemies at 
such a great disadvantage, the Germans might 
hope to overcome them now the advantage lay on 
their side. For while in January, 191 7, the Allies 
had had 178 divisions in France, in December, 19 17, 
they had only 169. 
[ f Ludendorff felt certain that with equal numbers 
I he could win the war in the West, and that winter 
he told the main committee of the Reichstag that 
the odds were 3 to i on him. This assertion must 
have been genuine, for he never coiild have im- 
posed another effort on the Germans, exhausted as 
they were with the desperate struggle of three 

28 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

years' war on so many fronts, against so many 
opponents, had he had any doubt of the result. 
About the same time the extent of this exhaustion 
was disclosed at those secret meetings of the States 
of the Hapsburg monarchy, in which they discussed i^^ 

their foreign policy, known as the Delegations. 
The question being whether and how to continue 
the war, the Delegations were told what were the 
losses of the Central Powers. But some of the 
members of the Delegations were Poles, who, as 
a partitioned people, had a foot in each camp. 
Through this leak the information reached the 
AUies.^ 

The Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose popula- 
tion at the outbreak of the war may be perhaps 
.placed at 55 milHon, had had 10,300,000 (ten 
million, three hundred thousand) men of military 
age. Of these, 7,600,000 (seven million, six hun- 
dred thousand) had become casualties. ' , . ^^^^,^t*-» ^^^ 

The German Empire, whose population at the 
outbreak of war may perhaps be placed at about 
70 million, had had 14 million men of miHtary age, 
of which 12,600,000 (twelve miUion, six hundred 

^ The historian can find this information and these figures 
in a Foreign Office telegram, from Mr. Lindley, Petrograd, 
number 529, and dated Feb. 27, 1918. 

29 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

thousand) had been passed fit for military service, 
out of whom 7,700,000 (seven million, seven him- 
dred thousand) had become casualties. 
' So, in rough proportions, the Central Empires 
turned a fifth of their population into soldiers, and 
had had a tenth of them killed, hurt, or lost in three 
years. These figures, if right, give a basis for an 
exact calculation how much wider the suffering of a 
modern war is than it used to be in the eighteenth 
century. Gibbon laid it down^ that the highest 
proportion of soldiers that a civilised state could 
maintain was one hundredth of its popiilation. 
But in the twentieth century that proportion had 
risen to a fifth. Thus the circle of those exposed 
to the dangers and pains of war had been enlarged 
twenty times by otir increased means of accimiu- 
lating and producing wealth. 

In the autumn of 191 7, a last and desperate 
attempt of the Central Powers to win the war in 
the ensuing nine months was to be anticipated. 
Mr. Lloyd George had come to doubt more and 
more whether the system of the Allies, which since 
19 14 had yielded nothing but failure and disas- 
ter, could meet this attack; if it failed when supe- 
rior in numbers, it was hardly likely to succeed 

* Decline and Fall, Chap, v., opening sentences. 

30 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

when inferior. Dtiring the whole of 191 7 he and 
Lord Milner had accepted the military adviser 
bequeathed to them by Mr. Asqtiith— General 
Robertson. 

He was a great administrator, with the great 
quaHties this implies. Lord Kitchener had been a 
great symbol of our greatness, with a terrible light 
of African victories, Khartoum and the Vaal, 
pla3ang round his head, a name to awe our enemies 
and cheer us in the conflict ; but he was not success- 
ful as an organiser, contrary to common opinion. 
Being elderly, he naturally kept unchanged the 
habits of his whole life, spent with small Eastern 
and African armies, where he could and did do 
everything by himself. This method of work he 
applied to the large national armies he was raising, 
and so called into being a vast, and aknost \m- 
fathomable, administrative chaos. This chaos 
General Robertson had reduced to shape and 
order; but his peculiar ability, which had raised 
him. to the highest rank, after his start at the lowest, 
had been acquired and exercised chiefly in Ad- 
ministration and IntelHgence. His attainments in 
this sphere could be no other than very exceptional 
to lift him so high in an army like ours, where social 
advantages push on, and social disabilities hold 

31 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

back, so very much; but the absence of an early 
Hberal education deprived him of one of the few 
quahties (if not the only one) which early edu- 
cation can confer, flexibility of mind. General 
Robertson's plan, and he had no other, was to raise 
and train more men ; in fact, to do the thing he was 
< so very capable of doing. If the two sides were 
; allowed to go on killing each other in France in- 
i definitely, when all the Germans were dead there 
1 would still be a few Allies left, and they would win. 
■ This was his simple strategy, as far as can be 
\ gathered from his memoranda to the War Cabinet, 
to which the future historian of the war is earnestly 
5< referred. He reveals himself in them, as every one 
must reveal himself who sets his pen to paper, and 
shows a mind keen and quick in the highest degree, 
but narrow, and obstinately entrenched in its own 
narrowness; on questions of military operations, 
too, not only unreliable and mistaken, but evi- 
dently not at his ease at all with that kind of sub- 
jject. These memoranda reply to the inquiries of 
Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Milner for advice with 
sullen reluctance, as if they were meddling in what 
\ did not concern them. 

Robertson's military ideas are to be found, far 
more tellingly expressed than in his own memo- 

32 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

randa, in the contributions to the Press, of the writer 
whom we know now to have been his mouthpiece.' 
He rejected unity of command as a "radical, un- 
timely , dangerous ' ' change . The right strategy was 
raising sixty more divisions, in addition to the 
seventy odd we already possessed, and "wearing 
the Germans down." ^ This was the point of differ- 
ence between him and the War Cabinet, who hesi- 
tated at loading us (who already bore almost the 
whole naval and financial burden of the war) with 
an army almost as great as the Germans, and who 
presumed to think there might exist a less primitive 
strategy, especially as the Allies had long had an 
overwhelming preponderance in numbers over the 
Central Powers, without attaining to any restilt. 

On such an adviser the War Cabinet had had to 
rely for advice, not only as to the conduct of opera- 
tions on vast and various fields, but on subjects 
which were as much political as military, and re- 
quired the judgment of a statesman as much as that 
of a soldier. They had endiu'ed his covert opposi- 
tion, which we now know was backed with incessant 

^ See Appendix A. The relations between General 
Robertson, General Maurice, and Colonel Repington. 

^ The Times, Dec. i8, 1917; Nov. 24, 1917; May 8, 1917; 
Aug. II, 1917. 

^ 33 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

intrigue in the Press/ for a whole year, and the 
yields of his policy, compared with its expenditure 
during that year, did not seem to recommend itself. 
The following figures, strictly speaking, are casual- 
ties on all fronts; but all except a small fraction 
were incurred in France. 

The Somme (July to November, inclusive, 191 6) 
had cost us 22,923 (twenty-two thousand, nine 
himdred and twenty-three) officers, and 476,553 
(four hundred and seventy-six thousand, five 
himdred and fifty-three) men.^ In 1917, the Arras 
offensive (April and May) gave us casualties of 
9657 (nine thousand, six himdred and fifty-seven) 
officers, and 186,453 (one hundred and eighty-six 
thousand, four hundred and fifty- three) men; but 
some groimd was gained. In Flanders, at Pas- 
schendaele and other places, and at Cambrai (June 
to December, inclusive, 191 7) we had got little or 
nothing for casualties of 26,459 (twenty-six thou- 
sand, four hundred and fifty-nine) officers, and 
428,004 (four himdred and twenty-eight thousand 
and four) men in seven months. The two big 
battles of the year 191 7 had cost us altogether the 

^ See Appendix A, for the evidence. 
^ The historian will find these figures in the great Statisti- 
cal Abstract of the War, in the Archives of the War Office. 

34 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

huge amount of 36,116 (thirty-six thousand, one 
hundred and sixteen) officers, and 614,457 (six hun- 
dred and fourteen thousand, four hundred and 
fifty-seven) men. 

Even at first sight the yield, next to the expense, 
seems slender. On closer view it seems worse still. 
This more exact view can perhaps be got by making 
two comparisons, one with the cost of our last vic- 
torious advance in 191 8, and the other with the cost 
of a corresponding French attack. 

Our victorious advance in 191 8 carried our armies 
from a desperate situation, where they were pinned 
against the Channel ports and the Somme estuary, 
within reach of Germany, almost at one boimd. 
From August to November, 19 18, inclusive, our 
outgoings were 17,426 (seventeen thousand, four 
himdred and twenty-six) officers and 340»745 (three 
hundred and forty thousand, seven himdred and 
forty-five) men in casualties. 

Foch's hundred days' battle and real victory cost 
us three-quarters of what the paper successes of 
Flanders battle in 191 7, or of the Somme in 19 16 
had cost us. 

But a better comparison still is with correspond- 
ing French expenses. Our Arras battle of the 
spring, 191 7, which was successful, corresponded 

35 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

with a French attack at the Chemin des Dames, on 
a far grander scale, with a mass of manoeuvre, 
Nivelle's Armee de Rupture, equal to our whole 
army, which failed in a determined attempt to 
break the German line. After this failure a great 
body of French troops revolted at Soissons — ^the 
greatest rebellion in the war on our side — and pro- 
claimed they would no longer obey orders to go into 
such "butchery,"' and after this Foch and Petain 
gave them a rest from big battles during that year. 
But Nivelle's casualties had only been 107,000 
(one hundred and seven thousand). 

No belligerent, in my opinion, not even the al- 
most unarmed Russian masses, to whom the Ger- 
man communiques (the real commimiques, not 
those given to us), always refer in the same way as 
they do to us, "the English masses," were ever 
slaughtered at the same profuse rate as we were, 
though our dogged, dauntless, and devoted armies 
were the only belligerent armies who at no time in 
the war ever showed any signs of rebellion or dis- 
solution, and I base my opinion on the following 
two sets of figures. 

Every front, compared to the French front, was 

^ The cry of the French mutineers was, "A bas la guerre! 
plus de boucherie." 

36 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

relatively safe ; out of every nine men who went 
to France five became casualties. Therefore the 
chance of escape was less than an even chance ; but 
at Salonika, the safest front, only i in 21 became 
casualties. Thus it was 20 to i against being killed 
or hurt in the Balkans, apart from disease; it was 
15 to I in Egypt, and 25 to 4 in Mesopotamia.' 
In France, too, were concentrated the great bulk of 
our forces, three-quarters or two-thirds of the whole 
of our forces overseas. Therefore our losses were 
almost all losses in France. 

The great national armies which we raised only 
really began to fight on the Somme; the first 
month's casualties at the Somme (Jtily, 19 16) gave 
about the same total as the casualties of all the 
previous big battles put together. So, roughly 
speaking, our national armies fought for little more 
than half the time that the far greater French na- 
tional armies, half as big again, fought on their own 
soil, yet the final total of killed and missing (not 
casualties) suffered by our forces in the war is little 
less than the French total. In hundreds of thou- 
sands it is II (eleven) to their 13 (thirteen). 

The published German official figures for killed 

^ The historian can find these figures in the Statistical 
Abstract of the War, in the Archives of the War Ofiice. 

37 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

and missing is 1 7 in the same linits. This is too low 
to be credible; other figures similarly published, 
like the ntimber of German prisoners, can be 
checked and are a good deal below the real figure, 
it may therefore be taken that this figure 17 is be- 
low the real figure. But even if a large addition is 
made to it, as the discoimt of official misrepresenta- 
tion, the German rate of loss must have been far 
smaller than the Allied rate, if their double front, 
far more restricted resources, far smaller numbers, 
and far more numerous battles and campaigns are 
taken into account. Such is the advantage in hu- 
man lives gained by previous preparation, however 
wicked, and the price paid for improvisation, how- 
ever wonderful, in war. 

Before the war the Director of Military Opera- 
tions at Army Headquarters had been Sir Henry 
Wilson, and in the nattiral course of events the 
position of Chief of the Imperial General Staff, 
held by General Robertson, would have come to 
him ; but he had been passed over, in spite of his high 
reputation, by Mr. Asquith, who condemned the 
part he had played at the War Office dtiring the 
Irish crisis of 19 14. For imder a ponderous man- 
ner and a portentous phraseology Mr. Asquith 
concealed a capricious petulance; but so much do 

38 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

I appearances govern the world that a pompous ex- 
I terior is siifficient to keep a reputation for deliber- 
j ate judgment and weighty prudence. Sir Henry- 
had predicted and prepared for this war all his life. 
He had been over this ground on which it was to be 
fought time after time on his bicycle, and, for ex- 
ample, had chosen the billets our Headquarters 
were to occupy in one place during the Mons retreat 
long before the war. Whatever his value as an 
officer commanding in the field, of which only a 
professional can judge, he was far superior to any 
British general officer who ever attended the Su- 
preme War Coimcil in intelligence and imagination, 
of which any man can judge. Perhaps, indeed, 
his native brilliance and effervescent Irish gaiety ^^^ • 
were too great not to damage him in the eyes of 
the sound but rather stolid sportsman, the British 
Regular. He was not only diplomatic but diplo- 
matic to excess. But this very fault was his great- 
est advantage. For we have always been compelled 
to fight our continental wars in co-operation with 
or by means of the troops of other nations, and our 
great leaders, like Marlborough or Wellington, had 
to be diplomats as well as strategists. Their part 
has always been to unit and guide the troops of 
various nations through or with whom we have 

39 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

always acted. Any one present at the debates of 
the Supreme War Cotincil, whether civil or mili- 
tary, became at once aware why only an English- 
man could give the Alliance as a whole a true direc- 
tion; it was because England was iminvaded. 
None of our Allies could take a general view. The 
occupations of their soil by the Germans really 
frenzied them, and prevented them seeing anything 
else. It was pitiful to see their rage at the thought. 
No doubt we should not have been otherwise had 
we known that in Kent and Norfolk yoimg women, 
or even little girls in their teens, were being out- 
raged by gross German brutes. One village in 
their country was more to them than empires in 
the East. "If only," Sir Henry Wilson used to 
exclaim in mock despair, "if only we could make 
the French understand where Mesopotamia is." 
The sea, also, was as imintelligible to them as the 
rest of the world was imimportant. The French 
generals, superb as was their conception of la grande 
guerre in European fields, and dazzling beyond be- 
lief their exposition of it, seemed to have gained this 
intensely professional (and therefore perhaps neces- 
sarily narrow) capacity by excluding everything 
else from their minds. They spoke of the sea as if 
it was a smooth, flat, and safe surface along which 

40 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

divisions and their supplies could be moved about 
as draughts are across a draught-board. Yet half 
the questions arising had a naval complication. 
Half the debates ended on a phrase, which, like a 
stupid joke in a pantomime, became amusing by 
its mere recurrence. This phrase was "C'est tou- 
jours une question de tonnage," which Sir Henry- 
used to guffaw in his John Bull French. But an 
English soldier-statesman like Sir Henry could not 
but understand both the East and the sea, because 
they had always been the main factors in all his 
problems. Sir Henry had all the merits if he had 
some of the defects of his idiosyncrasy ; he was ur- 
bane, adroit, imalterably patient, and endlessly 
painstaking in the pursuit of his ends, which he 
, followed with coiling, serpentine vigilance. So 
well did he understand and manage the French, 
that in 191 7 the French Government had formally 
stipulated in their written agreements that he 
should be the liaison officer between the two 
armies.^ They never forgot the dexterity with 
which he composed the dispute between Lord 
French and Gallieni in the hours before the Mame, 
when a quarrel might have been disastrous. For 

^ See M. Briand's despatch quoted in Appendix B, "Unity 
of Command in 19 1 7." 

41 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

though not good at French, he understood some- 
thing far more difficult than their language, the 
free, violent, rhetorical modes of speech used by 
Latins, always baffling, usually shocking, and some- 
times exasperating to grave, contained, romantic 
northerners. His Irish ebullience was as much to 
their taste as it had always been disconcerting to 
his fellow officers. He came into Clemenceau's 
room one morning the press had been criticising 
Clemenceau's age, snatched him up, and whirled 
him dancing rotmd the room till the old man's 
black indoor skull-cap fell off, "just," he said, "to 
show them how young we really are." In a debate 
he knew very well how to use their predilection for a 
jest, and promptness to laugh. He had a singular 
gift of seeing things, persons, or situations in a 
simple and direct way, and expressing his views 
with brevity and clearness; the short and lucid 
logic of his memoranda for the War Cabinet, to 
which the historian is again referred, constitute 
models, either as advice or orders. It is sad to 
think that both he and Foch, who had devoted — 
perhaps in the case of Foch one may say conse- 
crated — their lives to a preparation for this great 
struggle, were — Wilson in spite of his accomplish- 
ments, and Foch in spite of his achievements — 

42 




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m"^^M 


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y 


P 




P 


^■M 


l_ 


i^' 



© Press Illustrating Service, Inc. 
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR FREDERICK B. MAURICE 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

kept in subordinate positions and minor tasks till 
its fourth year, when, by the will of Mr. Lloyd 
George, taking charge of our affairs at their very 
worst, all our advantages having been wasted or 
thrown away, they yet ended in a few months an 
apparently interminable contest. 

General Wilson, in effect, maintained — 
"The fault of the Allies' system has always been 
that there was no system at all; their political has 
never been adjusted to their military action; if it 
had been, Bulgaria might in 19 15 have been made 
to come in on our side. Their military action has 
not been connected; if it had been, the intervention 
of Rotimania in 19 16 might have been decisive. 

"If the war had been directed by a central and 
supreme body, co-ordinating political with military 
effort, and army with army, instead of these being 
connected by temporary arrangements, missions, 
liaisons, the Central Powers would have succimibed 
long ago. But the absence of imity, for want of 
which we have failed to attain victory, is now going 
to give it to them. They have now one instead of 
two fronts, and free on the East, they are going 
to throw their whole weight on the West. That 
front, which, from the North Sea to the Adriatic, 
forms a single front, has never been treated as such. 

43 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

It is just possible for the British, French, and Italian 
armies to act separately when on the offensive, as 
they have been most of the time. But now they 
will have, till the Americans arrive in force, to 
stand on the defensive. The armies of the Central 
Powers will crush each separately, unless there is a 
single central command to give the whole strength 
of the other two Allied armies, at once, and with no 
delay, to the third." 

These prognostics were too soon justified. As 
Major Grasset says, "the thunderbolt fell without 
so much as the warning of the lightning flash." 

On October 25, 19 17, the Germans broke through 
the Italian front at Caporetto, and in the ensuing 
retreat General Cadoma lost a quarter of a million 
men in casualties and a quarter of a million men in 
prisoners. His army almost entirely dissolved. So 
the first German offensive in the West had almost 
destroyed the Italian army. 

Foch was then Chief of the French General 
Staff, having been called back in the spring of 
191 7 — after Nivelle's failure — from his retirement. 
For retired in 1916, he had been given, as Major 
Grasset tells us, the special task of planning the 
defence of Switzerland. As soon as the Russian 
Revolution had taken place, and a prospect of a 

44 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

German offensive in the West therefore appeared, 
the Swiss Government (so small was their faith in 
German professions) had anticipated that the Cen- 
tral Powers would violate its neutrality in order to 
turn the Allied right in France. Foch had produced 
a plan, exquisite in its subtle simplicity, by which 
the troops of the Swiss confederation, after acting 
as covering troops, would have retired to the cen- 
tral, inexpugnable massif of their country, while 
fifty French divisions would have caught in flank 
the German armies pouring through the fiat cor- 
ridor of the Aar Valley, too narrow for them either 
to deploy or retreat, while the Swiss army hung on 
the other flank. This famous plan is known as 
*'Le plan H.'" An apprehension about Switzer- 
land, sharpened perhaps by the memory of the 
French mistake about Belgium in 1914, never left 
the minds of Foch and Petain and affected all their 
dispositions in the winter 1917-1918, as those dis- 
positions themselves show. 

But the blow fell in Italy, not Switzerland. 
Within twenty-four hours of hearing the news of the 
break through, Foch had begim entraining French 
troops to go to Cadoma's help ; six French followed 

^ The historian can find an abstract of it in the Registry 
at Versailles. 

45 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

by five English divisions had hurried there. Even 
with this assistance Cadorna intended abandoning 
the Hne of the Piave, fearing the position could be 
turned from the Alps, and retreating to the linei of 
the Mincio. Foch hastened to his headquarters 
and, as Major Grasset politely puts it, "persuaded 
Cadorna that he had not suffered definite defeat, 
and that the enemy could be checked on the Piave." 
Foch really bullied him so that he thought it prefer- 
able to stand and face the Austrians than retreat 
and face Foch. Had Foch's decision not been so 
rapid, for he had given orders for the French di- 
visions to be moved towards Italy before Cadorna 
asked for help, .the line of the Piave would cer- 
tainly not have been retained. But the next line, 
that of the Mincio, gave a very long front to the 
Italians, instead of the short line of the Piave from 
the Alps to the sea. As Cadorna was never tired of 
repeating when he went to Versailles, not eleven, 
but twenty or thirty Anglo-French divisions would 
have been required to hold the line of the Mincio. 
This would have been so serious a diminution of 
the Anglo-French forces in France, that it might 
have seemed preferable to abandon the Italians 
altogether. Only Foch's promptitude prevented 
Caporetto from being a blow fatal to Italy. 

46 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

Foch insists in his Principles of War that a battle 
is a "crisis," a "swift and bloody drama." But in 
his ordinary language and unconsciously, he always 
uses a word that is even more expressive of his con- 
ception of the pace at which the events of a battle 
proceed and the consequent necessity of quick de- 
cision. He never says a battle "begins," he always 
says, rather strangely, "a battle is off," using the 
word properly applicable to horses starting in a 
race ("ime fois la bataille partie"). 

But it is some of the subsequent discussions that 
took place between Foch and Cadoma that show 
the faults of the Allied system more than the battle 
itself. The eleven Anglo-French divisions in Italy 
were a definite diminution of the Allied forces in 
France, but they were a definite loss only because 
of the insufficient railroad commimication between 
France and Italy. 

So defective were these that some of the French 
divisions coming to the help of Cadoma had had to 
cross the Alps on foot, or else they would have 
arrived too late. When the whole Western front 
was treated as one, this defect was evident at once ; 
an indefinite nimiber of Italian divisions could have 
come to France, or Anglo-French divisions to Italy, 
if the railroad communication had been improved 

47 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

sufficiently to shift them back again shuttle-wise 
whenever and wherever they were wanted. A few 
weeks before the 191 8 campaign began it was too 
late to start construction. Whenever Weygand, 
Foch's Chief of the Staff, and Cadoma at Versailles, 
discussed the subject at the meetings of the Mili- 
tary Representatives, they used to lament and 
shrug and sigh over its being too late.' But if a 
central military organ of command for the whole 
front between the North Sea and the Adriatic had 
existed before, the necessity for the improvement 
would have appeared as soon as they started dis- 
cussing, and it could easily have been carried out 
in the early part of the war. 

Caporetto decided Mr. Lloyd George; at a Con- 
ference held at Rapallo in the beginning of Novem- 
ber, the Supreme War Council was foimded as a 
central directing political body for the whole alli- 
ance; it was a monthly meeting of the principal 
ministers of each country at Versailles. There was 
a permanent staff of Military Representatives at 
that place to act as their military advisers, and to 

^ I speak from personal knowledge: it gradually became 
my duty to act as sole interpreter to the Military Repre- 
sentatives at their formal meetings, as well as being a mem- 
ber of the joint inter-Allied Secretariat. 

48 



FOUNDATION OF WAR COUNCIL 

1 co-ordinate the action of all the Allied forces. 

These military advisers were Sir Henry Wilson; 

Weygand, Chief of the Staff to Foch in Paris; 
1 General Cadoma; and later General BHss, Amer- 
ican Chief of the Staff. "This," as Major Grasset 

says, "was a hesitating but not less decisive step 

towards tinity in command." 



49 



II 

THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 



51 



II 

The Plan of Campaign for 191 8 

The Supreme War Council, at their December 
Session, directed all commanders of all Allied ar- 
mies and staffs to give the Military Representatives 
all possible information. A constant liaison be- 
tween all the main centres of the war and Versailles 
was established; for example, a permanent tele- 
phonic communication with the War Cabinet and 
with G.H.Q. From all these quarters information 
came pouring into Versailles without cessation.^ 
During December and January a number of inter- 
Allied questions of great importance were referred 
to it which the Military Representatives decided 
by means of joint notes, signed by all of them, and 
presented to their respective Governments. They 

^ Again I speak from personal knowledge. I was the 
first Allied officer — after the French Camp Commandant — 
to get into the building assigned to the Supreme War Coun- 
cil and, owing to my dual position of secretary and inter- 
preter, was busily employed in this organization. 

53 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

turned out these joint notes at the rate of two or 
three a week. But the main plans elaborated be- 
tween Foch and Sir Henry Wilson at Versailles can 
be better understood if the forces in opposition, as 
they were to be between the middle and the end of 
February, 191 8, when the fighting was expected to 
begin, are known. 

By the flow of divisions from the East, the Ger- 
mans in France then had 1 78 divisions, estimated 
at 1630 battalions, 1,232,000 rifles, and 24,000 
sabres; 8800 field ^uns and 5500 heavy gims. The 
AUies had available 97 French, 57 British, 10 Bel- 
gian, I American, and 2 Portuguese; altogether 167 
divisions, estimated at 1585 battalions, 1,480,000 
rifles, 74,000 sabres ; 8900 field guns and 6800 heavy 
guns. So the Allied totals were still superior to the 
German, the German units, divisions, and battalions 
being smaller than the Allied. The rate at which 
their divisions could be brought from the East, 
where they still had 58, of rather inferior quality, 
was about 10 a month. Of those perhaps 40 at the 
most could be expected to appear in France, and 
so their maximum strength, between 200 and 210 
divisions, would be reached in May. But the 
American divisions (of which one only was now in 
the line and counted) were beginning to come in; 

54 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

so that at no time would the German superiority in 
number over the Allies be near so great as the Allied 
superiority over the Germans had been for at least 
one and a half years. There ought, therefore, to 
have been no cause for anxiety. 

On the Italian front there were still the 1 1 Anglo- 
French divisions sent there after Caporetto, and 50 
Italian divisions; 764 battalions, 633,000 rifles, 
6400 sabres; 3700 field guns and 2100 heavy guns. 
The enemy had only 43^ Austrian and 3 German, 
a total of 46^^ divisions ; 439,000 rifles, 3400 sabres ; 
3000 field guns and 1500 heavy guns. On the Ital- 
ian front, therefore, we are still 6 to 4 in spite of 
Caporetto. 

In the East the Austrians had 34 divisions, some 
of which might be expected to come to Italy; but 
on the other hand, the Italians had not yet put into 
the line all the divisions they had reconstructed out 
of their defeated troops during the winter, out of 
which they were ultimately to form the Sixth Army. 

In the Balkans there were 23 Bulgarian, 2 Ger- 
man, and 2 Austrian divisions, a total of 27; 294 
battalions, 228,000 rifles, 3000 sabres; 972 field 
gtins and 353 heavy guns. On our side 8 French, 
43^ British, i}4 Italian, 3 Greek, 6 Serbian, i Ital- 
ian in Albania, 23 divisions in all; 271 battalions, 

55 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

219,000 rifles, 7000 sabres; iioo field guns and 380 
heavy guns. Here the enemy was slightly superior, 
but the Greek mobilisation was not finished ; later 
in the spring the size of their contingent would be 
doubled or trebled; this would leave the advantage 
to the Allies again. 

In Palestine and Mesopotamia the Allies were 
overwhelmingly larger than the Turks, whose bat- 
talions, by the time they reached the front, were 
all reduced to 200 or 300 by desertion. General 
Allenby in Palestine had 7 British and i Indian 
divisions; 117 battalions, 100,000 rifles, 16,000 
sabres; 410 field guns and 93 heavy guns. Facing 
him were 11 Turkish divisions and i second-class 
German division at and south of Damascus; 107 
battalions, but only 29,000 rifles and 3000 sabres 
and perhaps 200 or 300 gims. We were 3 to i. 

In Mesopotamia, i British and 5 Indian divi- 
sions; loi battalions, 125,000 rifles, 9000 sabres; 
300 field gims and 50 heavy guns. Against these 
the Turks had nominally 5 divisions and 47 battal- 
ions; but these only amounted to 18,000 rifles, 1000 
sabres, and no more than 100 guns. Here we were 
6 to I. 

This survey would not be complete without a 
mention of Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa, with 

56 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 191 8 

his 250 Europeans and 1500 Africans. A British 
and native force of 12,000 rifles, with a ration (not 
a combatant) strength of 55,000, were kept busy 
chasing him. 

All military information from all Allied sources 
was concentrated by the Inter-Allied Staffs at 
Versailles; each week, for the convenience of the 
Military Representatives, tables were prepared in 
the British section showing the forces on each side 
in every theatre ; the historian will find these figures 
in these tables. 

So the Allies, in spite of losing the Russians and 
Rotomanians, kingdoms of millions of men, who had 
thrown into the balance more than 190 divisions, 
in spite of not having more than one American 
division at their side from a country which had 
actually registered 25 million men as capable of 
military service, in spite of these deductions, at the 
beginning of 19 18, still had the advantage. 

War abstracts the world into a chess-board where 
each piece is measured in divisions. At the first 
meeting of the Supreme War Coimcil, M. Venizelos 
harangued it for an hour on the past, present, and 
future glories of Hellas; but when he stopped 
drenching his audience with his eloquence, the only 
voice raised was that of General Robertson, who 

57 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

just asked, "How many divisions can you give us 
in the spring?" From the height of the Supreme 
War Coimcil the number of divisions Greece could 
supply was all Greece stood for. 

The plan of campaign for 191 8 was the work of 
Foch, Sir Henry Wilson, and Mr. Lloyd George, in 
the sense that while some of the leaders of the Alli- 
ance favovired some parts of it, and others others, 
they were in favour of all of it and imposed it on 
all the other leaders. They, in effect, said to the 
Supreme War Council — 

"We will stand on the defensive on the Western 
front till the Americans arrive; on the defensive, if 
we give the Allied armies on the front from the 
North Sea to the Adriatic a single organ of com- 
mand, we should be able to resist the enemy, if they 
were able to resist us. But let us take the offensive 
in Palestine; Turkey is exhausted, and a defeat in 
Palestine will knock Turkey out. Such a result will 
have further consequences which we cannot foresee* 
but which might be decisive." 

There were thus two parts to this plan, a central 
command in the West and an offensive in Palestine. 

A central command seems easy to create. The 
French solution was that it should be given to a 
French general, a natural claim on a front where 

58 




Press Illustrating Service, Inc. 



GENERAL ROBERTSON 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

they had 103 divisions to 62 British and 50 Italian; 
but, as Sir Henry Wilson always insisted, the right 
to command, when complete and entire, involves 
the right to dismiss, and therefore it was a right 
which in simple entirety could not be given to any 
general of any single nation, for no army of any 
nation would bear having its leaders dismissed by 
a foreigner. 

In effect, the function of a generalissimo would 
have been to fix the quantity and use of the Allied 
Reserve, if this whole front was treated as a single 
front. This would have been his work in a defen- 
sive campaign, such as was anticipated. Asstmi- 
ing that any point or points were threatened by the 
enemy, such a generalissimo would have decided 
the nimiber, place, and movement of imits from the 
rest of the front that were to go to the defence of 
that point. 

Foch and Sir Henry Wilson put forward a simple 
and ingenious proposal, with the object of giving 
the three Allied armies all the advantages of a gen- 
eralissimo without the objections; the three Com- 
manders-in-Chief were to remain Commanders-in- 
Chief, but at Versailles there was to be formed an 
Executive War Board, with Foch as Chairman, 
General Cadoma as the Italian, and General Bliss 

59 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

as the American, members, and a British General 
as British member. This Board was to have the 
right to demand from each Commander-in-Chief 
a certain number of divisions which it coiild control. 
Divisions placed in the General Reserve would 
be ear-marked, and not to be used by any Com- 
mander-in-Chief without permission of the Execu- 
tive War Board, which had authority to fix their 
number, place, movement, and use. 

The Executive War Board, brought into exist- 
ence to handle the General Reserve, gave each 
Commander-in-Chief the advantages of a generalis- 
simo; the General Reserve was a banking account 
on which each could draw if he was attacked; his 
drafts wovild be fixed by the War Board, according 
to their judgment. On the other hand, he had none 
of the disadvantages of a generalissimo. No Com- 
mander-in-Chief could suspect his forces were being 
exploited for the benefit of an ally's forces, which 
had always been the real obstacle to imity of com- 
mand ; for each nation had its representative on the 
War Board. Sir Henry Wilson and Foch in effect 
argued — 

"The system by which each Commander-in- 
Chief attacks separately is possible when on the 
offensive. But we must now stand on the defen- 

60 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

sive. Ludendorff will have about 200 divisions; 
he will leave 100 in the line, and attack one of the 
three Commanders-in-Chief, French, British, or 
Italian, with a mass of manoeuvre of 100 divisions; 
no single Commander-in-Chief parts with his re- 
serves willingly. There will be discussions and 
consequent loss of time that may be disastrous. 
There must be some superior authority to decide 
at once how much each of the others must con- 
tribute to help the one attacked. The Executive 
War Board, by means of the General Reserve, will 
do this." 

The French and British members of the Execu- 
tive War Board were, in fact, joint generalissimos 
of the Allied armies, and its membership became 
the greatest of military positions, the precious 
apple of gold the possessor of which might reap all 
the glory of the war, and it therefore at once be- 
came an apple of discord as well as an apple of gold. 
But Sir Henry's first proposal was that Foch and 
Robertson, the French and British Chiefs of Staff, 
should be the French and British members. Of 
course, Robertson eagerly welcomed and adopted 
the scheme. 

Linked to this creation of a central command was 
the extension of the British front. After a very 

61 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

close consideration, it had been decided by the 
Military Representatives subject to the creation 
of a General Reserve, to extend that front as far as 
the Ailette, though the French wanted it carried as 
far as Berry au Bac. Taking all the factors, and 
there were many, into consideration, they decided 
this was a point to which the British armies ought 
to go. Proceeding on entirely different methods of 
calculation, both General Cadoma and Sir Henry 
Wilson's staffs, working independently, fixed on 
the point as giving them their just extension. 

But Haig and Petain decided together on Barisis 
as the point, and this compromise was adopted by 
the Supreme War Council. Haig did not cover the 
new space he thus had to fill by widening the front 
held by each division in the line, and so stretching 
out the front held by each of his armies. The front 
of every British division was narrower than the 
space covered, under similar conditions, by a 
French or German division. When the question of 
the extension of the line was being discussed this 
was a great argument in the mouths of the French. 
'But Haig filled in the new space down to Barisis by 
drawing on his reserves, thus depleting them, and 
yet leaving the Fifth Army imder Gough, that went 
into this new space, imduly extended and weak. 

62 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

The Military Representatives at Versailles ar- 
gued — 

"If the Allied line in France was treated as one 
front, it could not be equally strong at every point. 
Some portion must be thiner than others. But the 
creation of the General Reserve made this particu- 
lar point a matter of indifference. For if the weak 
point was attacked, the General Reserve could be 
drawn there at once, and the War Board had the 
authority to make the General Reserve as large as 
it liked, drawing from all armies. So the weakest 
point could at once be made the strongest." 

Besides, Gough's army was at the point of jimc- 
tion of the Franco-British lines. They considered 
it rather an advantage that this point should be the 
weakest. It was evident — and the papers demon- 
strating this are in existence at Versailles — that if 
the German attack was met (in the only way it 
could be met) by both British and French troops 
fighting shoulder to shoulder at whatever point the 
attack came, then the most convenient point for us, 
and the worst for Ludendorff, was the point of 
jimction of the French and British lines, just where 
Gough was, and for this reason: French and Eng- 
lish, having each their own type of arms and supply, 
had each to have lines of communication of their 

63 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

own. It would be very inconvenient for us to es- 
tablish these, say, to Switzerland, or for the French 
to do so, say, to Ypres. But this difficulty did not 
arise if the fighting took place at the point of junc- 
tion; to that point they already existed for both 
armies. 

The other part of the plan of campaign was the 
Palestine offensive; AUenby already had an over- 
whelming preponderance over the Turks. That 
preponderance was to be further increased : he was 
to be reinforced from Mesopotamia with forces 
originally fixed at a higher figure, but ultimately 
amounting to one Indian division. An Indian 
cavalry division in France was to be sent to him. 
His forces were so large that the real difficulty was 
supplying him, and his capacity for hitting hard 
depended much more upon the rate at which the 
railroad from Egypt could be pushed forward. But 
with a little time, and a great deal of railroad ma- 
terial, it was reckoned he ought to be able to annihi- 
late the very inferior Turkish forces in front of him. 

At a Session held at the end of January, the 
French members of the Supreme War Council at 
first presented some opposition to this Eastern 
project, but assented on condition that no white 
troops were removed from France for this attempt. 

64 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

There was also opposition to it from General 
Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. 
General Robertson was also proposed as the British 
member of the Executive War Board at this Ses- 
sion, but was excluded by Mr. Lloyd George, who 
placed General Sir Henry Wilson there instead. 
So the golden prize which had himg before Robert- 
son was neatly made to fall into Sir Henry's mouth ; 
Robertson, not unnaturally, was furious. This was 
quite visible. Long after the Supreme War Coun- 
cil had risen, after passing this resolution, and only 
a few secretaries being left in the room, Robertson 
still remained sitting alone in his place, motionless, 
his head resting on his hand, glaring silently in 
front of him. 

This plan of campaign, in its two parts, a central 
command in France, and an offensive in Palestine, 
was in effect the plan that carried the Allies to vic- 
tory in the autumn; Allenby's annihilation of the 
Turkish army in front of him knocked out the 
comer stone of the edifice of the enemy's power, and 
Foch's conduct of the operations in France led to 
a resiilt that no one had anticipated. But the first 
winter edition of the plan was better both in means 
and conception than its autumn successor. Allen- 
by's British troops were taken from him after the 
s 65 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

disaster of the spring, and Indian divisions sub- 
stituted. Foch's authority as Chairman of the 
Executive War Board was better conceived and 
clearer than his authority as Generalissimo, which 
was never exactly defined. If the second edition 
of this plan of campaign finished the war, the first 
edition would have done it even more surely. So 
great in war is the importance of a good plan, that 
as soon as it was found and carried out, the war 
ended. In the winter ofi9i7-i9i8, a friend talking 
of the difficulties in front of the Allies, said to 
Foch's Chief of Staff, Weygand— 

"However bad our situation may seem now, it 
was worse for you and General Foch at the Mame ; 
for you were heavily outnumbered, and we will still 
be superior till the month of April." 

Weygand answered — 

"Our situation is much worse now; for then we 
had the magnificent plan of Marshal Joffre, and 
now we have no plan at all." 

Many legends exist about almost every event of 
war, especially of modern war ; any true account of 
any of these events would be voluminous, or rather 
interminable, if it were attempted to dispute and 
destroy the legendary cloud that surroimds it. 
But it was asserted at that time, and some people 

66 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

continue not only to repeat, but to write, that dur- 
ing this winter 19 17-19 18 the army was being 
starved of men, and that our statesmen endangered 
our soldiers and brought defeat on them, by refus- 
ing to reinforce them or to raise the men necessary 
to reinforce them. This is not the case ; it is a false 
view, invented and circulated for a particular pur- 
pose, that of explaining away repeated and almost 
constant failure of generalship. It continues to be 
repeated by simple people who at all times are dis- 
posed to think that wars are not won by brains, and 
that those who do the thinking without risking life 
or limb must always be wrong, and that those who 
risk life and limb must always be right, however 
little they may think. The first set of figures dis- 
proving this legend are the totals of the expedition- 
ary force on the Western front, from the North 
Sea to the Adriatic, including all ranks and units. 
On July I, 191 5, there were 603,803 (six hundred 
and three thousand, eight himdred and three) men; 
on January i, 191 7, i,59i»745 (one million, five 
hundred and ninety-one thousand, seven himdred 
and forty-five men; on January i, 1918, i, 937719 
(one million, nine himdred and thirty-seven thou- 
sand, seven hundred and nineteen) men; on April 
1, 1918, 2,019,773 (two millions, nineteen thousand, 

67 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

seven hundred and seventy-three) men ; on Novem- 
ber II, 1918, 1,939,529 (one million, nine hundred 
and thirty-nine thousand, five hundred and twenty- 
nine) men. The legend in this case is not only dis- 
torting, but is the opposite of the truth. The spring 
of 19 1 8 is the high-water mark reached by our 
armies on the Western front. The second set of 
figures are the totals of all our forces at home and 
abroad, including British, Colonial, Indian, native, 
and local troops (but excluding labour battalions) 
in every theatre of war. In November of the year 
1916, this total was 149,226 (one hundred and 
forty-nine thousand, two hundred and twenty-six) 
officers, and 4,061,628 (four million, sixty-one 
thousand, six himdred and twenty-eight) other 
ranks; in December of the year 1917, 208,583 (two 
hundred and eight thousand, five hundred and 
eighty-three) officers, and 4,698,585 (four million, 
six himdred and ninety-eight thousand, five htm- 
dred and eighty-five) other ranks; in March of 
the year 191 8, 220,770 (two hundred and twenty 
thousand, seven hundred and seventy) officers, and 
4,761,484 (four million, seven himdred and sixty- 
one thousand, four hundred and eighty-four) other 
ranks; at the Armistice, 193,102 (one hundred and 
ninety-three thousand, one hundred and two) 

68 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

officers, and 4,197,099 (four million, one hundred 
and ninety-seven thousand, and ninety-nine) other 
Franks. The spring of 191 8 is, therefore, also the 
high- water mark reached by all the military forces 
of the Crown.' If we suffered, it was not because, 
according to the cant phrase, the politicans be- 
trayed our soldiers. 

The Supreme War Council adopted this plan for 
19 1 8, at a session in the last days of January and 
the first days of February, 19 18. The utmost pre- 
cautions of secrecy were adopted; for some of the 
sittings most of the secretaries were excluded from 
the room. The copies of the plan of campaign and 
of the minutes of the meeting were limited to a few 
copies and put in the hands of only a few people. 
For Ludendorff, as he has now told us, was as anx- 
ious about being attacked as the Allies were. His 
position, a few weeks before the campaign could be 
expected to open, was anxious and precarious; on 
almost every front he was outnimibered. The col- 
lapse of any of the numerous fronts meant the loss 
of an ally whose faU would probably bring down 
another, till the four Central Powers knocked each 
other down like skittles. Through the two main 

^ The historian can find these figures in the Statistical 
Abstract of the War, in the Archives of the War Office. 

69 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

channels, Danish and Swiss, along which the indis- 
cretions of the enemy reached the ears of the Allies, 
they could know his apprehensions, which he con- 
fesses in his published memoirs. Verdun, close to 
the line of railroad which gave them lateral com- 
mimication, was a sensitive point in the German 
defensive system, and here the German General 
Staff anticipated an attack by the Allies that would 
forestall theirs. There was no secret more precious 
than where the Allied attack was coming. The 
various theatres of war, in which the system of the 
Central Powers lay, were strung out along an awk- 
ward line, separated by nature, and, in the East, 
connected by railroad lines of commimication in- 
sufficient, defective, and slow. Ignorant where the 
aim of the Allies was, no portion could be firmly 
defended by Ludendorff unless information was ac- 
quired where the blow was intended to fall; then 
forces sufficient to meet it might be concentrated 
in that quarter. The information was, therefore, 
inestimable. 

Public opinion in France and Italy had been 
canvassing the. question of a Supreme Commander 
in the field during the whole winter, and was natur- 
ally concerned at the disconnection between the 
three armies defending its soil. To reassure this 

70 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

opinion, the news that these armies had been given 
a certain unity under Foch was published in the 
papers, but in a vague and misleading way. The 
other decision, to overwhelm the Turkish armies in 
Palestine, was guarded with greater precautions of 
secrecy than any other decision ever taken by the 
Supreme War Council. 

An extraordinarily brilliant writer on miHtary 
matters, perhaps the very best, Colonel Repington, 
had till the beginning of January been military 
correspondent of the Times; at that date he left the 
Times, which had grown critical of General Robert- 
son, and became military correspondent of the 
Morning Post. He has lately pubHshed two large 
volumes of War Diaries, which shed a flood of un- 
expected light upon the relations of this journalist 
with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Gen- 
eral Robertson, and with his chief Staff Officer and 
inseparable attendant. General Maurice, the then 
Director of Military Operations, who in May, 191 8, 
was compulsorily retired from the Army.^ The 
conclusions to be drawn from the combined evi- 
dence of Repington' s newspaper articles and these 

^ See Appendix A: "The relations between General 
Robertson, General Maurice, and Colonel Repington" for a 
full discussion of their relations. 

71 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

Diaries are these. During Robertson's tenure of 
office, Repington was the instrument, the very 
effective instrument, of Robertson and his assist- 
ant Maiuice in the Press. Robertson criticised to 
Repington the Government, of which he was the 
technical military adviser, and thus violated his duty 
to his superiors; disclosed to him all our essential 
military secrets; and disparaged our Allies to him. 
Repington' s services to Robertson were public 
adulation; press agitation in favour of Robert- 
son's ideas; and public denunciation of Robert- 
son's superiors for the advantage of Robertson. 
Thus the closest connection existed between them. 
The evidence to this effect is long and rather te- 
dious, and will be found elsewhere.' 

On February ii, an article by Repington was 
published in the Morning Post. This article was a 
detailed and accurate account of the decisions and 
discussions of the last Session of the Supreme War 
Council. It described with fulness the Executive 
War Board as "The Versailles soldiers imder the 
presidency of General Foch," controlling and di- 
recting the reserves, and reveals the machinery 
by criticising it. He describes what he calls "the 
side show," in the very words of Mr. Lloyd George, 

^ In Appendix A. 

72 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

as recorded in the minutes of the Session, as "the 
dehvery of a knock-out blow to Turkey." So as 
to leave nothing in doubt, he indicates the theatre 
of war where the side show is to take place: "The 
Turks will retire in front of us from Damascus to 
Aleppo." The article also tells Ludendorff what 
Allenby's real difficulty was, the very point of the 
discussion that the Supreme War Council had had, 
"how long will it take for our broad-gauge railway, 
at the rate of half a mile a day, to reach Aleppo? " 
It also suggested to Ludendorff the best means of 
parrying the blow, "to evade Allenby's offensive 
by retiring, and bring the U-boats down the Dan- 
ube to Constantinople. ' ' The article is a summary, 
a very excellent and concise summary, of the prin- 
cipal discussions and decisions that had taken place, 
at a Session when the Supreme War Coimcil had 
refined on their usual precautions for secrecy, ex- 
travagant as these usually were. It can only have 
been written by some one who had the records of 
the Session in front of his eyes. This is also true of 
many entries in the Diaries. This charge made by 
me,^ of disclosing all these military secrets, has not 
been disputed by Repington; in an article^ he not 

* In Blackwood's Magazine, Sept, issue, 1920. 
^ See Nineteenth Century, Oct. issue, 1920. 

73 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

only admits it, but seems gratified by it as a tribute 
to his own importance. 

Repington not only made disclosures: the dis- 
closures themselves are pretexts for an attack on 
Mr. Lloyd George. He hopes "that Parliament 
will extract a definite promise from Mr. Lloyd 
George" that the decisions of the Supreme War 
Council will not be carried out. He invites Parlia- 
ment and the Army Council as well to act, and act 
according to his own opinion, that "Mr. Lloyd 
George had clearly and finally proved his incapacity 
to govern England in a great war." His object in 
revealing our military secrets is to overturn the 
Government. 

The first decision of the War Cabinet was to seize 
the printing-presses of the Morning Post, and to 
suppress it entirely. But after a talk with his At- 
torney-General, Sir Gordon Hewart, Mr. Lloyd 
George adopted a course much more astute. Rep- 
ington and the editor of the Morning Post (whose 
patriotic intentions are above suspicion) were 
prosecuted only for an offence under the Defence 
of the Realm Act, and Sir Gordon took care, during 
the prosecution, to make only the disclosures about 
the General Reserve a subject of complaint; the 
passage about the side show, which revealed the 

74 I 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

secret of the Allies, he treated as inoffensive. This 
artful treatment may have attenuated the effect of 
the publication. 

A violent dispute had arisen between Robertson 
and the War Cabinet on the Versailles decisions 
in the second week of February. On Thursday, 
February 14, Mr. Lloyd George decided to replace 
Robertson by Sir Henry Wilson as Chief of the 
Imperial General Staff. 

Repington's article revealing the Versailles de- 
cisions and the military plans of the Alliance ap- 
peared during the second week of February, on 
February 11. He invited the House of Commons to 
withdraw their confidence in Mr. Lloyd George 
because he had participated in these decisions and 
formed these plans. 

On February 5, the then leader of the Opposition, 
Mr. Asquith, had asked the Government what the 
Versailles decisions had been, but had been refused 
all information. Not knowing what they were, he 
could not make them the ground of an attack on the 
Government. On February 12 the business of the 
House was to be the Debate on the Address, which 
always gives the Opposition the opportunity of 
attacking the Government on any grounds it likes 
to choose. Repington's article on February 1 1 gave 

75 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

Mr. A.squith the knowledge he required, and, armed 
with it, he attacked Mr. Lloyd George on February 
12, but without success. 

The Repington article therefore was, in fact, 
used inside the House of Commons against the 
Government at a moment when Robertson was 
quarrelling with the Government outside it, and his 
dismissal was impending. On February 2 1 Reping- 
ton was convicted and fined at Bow Street. In his 
Diaries (February 26, 19 18), he publishes a letter 
from Robertson, dated February 25 (and too in- 
imitably in Robertson's style to be other than gen- 
uine) , which is worth reading with the greatest care. ' 

In this letter Robertson congratulates Reping- 
ton on his oonduct, as the noble work of a patriot, 
and condoles with him on his conviction ; and sub- 
sequently, according to the Diaries, he remained on 
terms of cordial friendship with him. 

Further, this letter very strongly suggests that 
during the preceding month Robertson and Reping- 
ton had been collaborating in a common enterprise, 
called "sordid " by Robertson himself, of which the 
object was to upset the Government, and that the 
publication of Repington's article had been part of 
this enterprise. 

^ For text of this letter, see Appendix A. 

76 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

Repington's explanation of where he got his in- 
formation cannot be accepted, for reasons set out 
elsewhere.' As it is difficult to accept Repington's 
explanation that he got his information from the 
French source he mentions; as the only possible 
source of his information was copies of the records 
of this Session in the hands of General Robertson ; 
as he expressed in his article the views of Robert- 
son; as, in his letter of February 25, Robertson uses 
language strongly suggesting that the publication 
of the article was intended to assist Robertson in 
upsetting Mr. Lloyd George, and it was, in fact, 
so used in the House of Commons. These consid- 
erations, taken together with the previous and sub- 
sequent relations existing between them, form a 
mass of circimistantial evidence pointing, with un- 
deviating finger, at General Robertson himself as 
having supplied Repington with the information he 
divulged to the enemy. 

If this supposition seems shocking, it is no more 
shocking than the fact that Robertson approved of 
Repington's action, both by his words and his acts. 
The difference in culpability between applauding 
and instigating such conduct is faint and shadowy, 
if it exists at all. The same censure applies to 

' See Appendix A again. 

77 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

Maurice, who is so hardened in these practices that 
even now he writes as if unconscious that the pub- 
Hcation of one's country's military plans to the 
world in time of war is wrongful, however obtained 
and whatever the object/ 

The Executive War Board — Foch, Wilson, Bliss, 
Cadoma — got to work at once. Foch proposed 
that the General Reserve should begin by being a 
seventh of the total Allied force from the North 
Sea to the Adriatic, and fixed it at thirty divisions; 
and on February 6, letters were addressed to each 
Commander-in-Chief asking him if he would con- 
tribute his quota, proportionate to the nimiber of 
divisions he commanded, to the General Reserve. 
On February 14, Sir Henry Wilson succeeded Sir 
William Robertson as Chief of the Imperial General 
Staff in London, and was succeeded at Versailles by 
General Rawlinson. 

Foch, when he came to Versailles, was an old 
man, imwell and worn with anxiety, and beginning 
to lose his trim horseman's figure. He shone in 
debate as much as he did in action. In his pro- 
found grasp of any question; in his capacity for 
dealing at once, and, conclusively, with any op- 

^ See his article on this subject in Oct. issue, 1920, of 
National Review. 

78 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

posite point which he rejected; in the skill with 
which he exposed the fallacy of an unsound argu- 
ment; in the flexible readiness with which he 
adapted his attitude to any contrary idea he felt 
unable to refute; in the facility and rapidity with 
which he evolved schemes to reach a common agree- 
ment ; in the closely woven and orderly logic of his 
thought; in the rapid, almost exuberant, flow of his 
speech; in the flashing power of illustrating his 
meaning; in his ruthless contempt for weaker dia- 
lecticians; in all these he resembled a great Chan- 
cery special. In the simplicity of his ways — he had 
not even an A.D.C., and he used to arrive alone, 
his papers under his arm, with an absence of 
ceremony astonishing to any one accustomed to 
the -pomp that surrounds even a brigadier — in 
the roughness of his ways, a strong contrast to the 
gentlemanly English, and grand manner of the 
Italians; in his extreme piety; in all these he was 
like a rustic French cure, redolent of the soil, the 
true soil of France, the soil of peasants and soldiers, 
descendants of those who accomplished the Gesta 
Dei per Francos, very different from the glittering 
foam of Paris. In sheer intellect, he towered above 
everyone at the Supreme War Coimcil as much as 
Mr. Lloyd George did in courage. 

79 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

Bliss and Cadoma were not quite on the same 
level as the other members; for Bliss had not yet 
got his army, and Cadoma had lost his. Cadorna 
had this advantage, that he was the only member 
who had ever been a Commander-in-Chief: this 
gave him an ease and snreness of judgment, a sort 
of light touch, which in these, as in other great 
affairs, only experience can give. But he was a 
beaten general, and the French never let him forget 
it, and trampled on him ruthlessly. "Defend the 
Piave," thundered Foch in a voice roughened by 
half a century of command, as Cadoma began his 
eternal plaints and his eternal petitions for more 
guns, more men, more coal, more of everything. 
"I tell you how I would defend the Piave; I would 
put a few sentries along the bank." Then after a 
pause and a reflective pull at his moustache, "And 
even then I would only put wooden sentries." 
Bliss had the goodwill, the industry, the sagacity, 
the massive bulk and slow movement of an ele- 
phant. He would have been the pillar of this or 
any other council, for he brought to the Alli- 
ance, where the members of every Inter- Allied 
team all pulled different ways, what it needed most, 
rigid impartiality, even towards its own govern- 
ment. "Very well, let Bliss arbitrate" ("Eh bien, 

80 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

prenons Bliss comme juge de paix"), Foch used to 
exclaim, when a discussion got too heated; and Bliss 
listened like a sage and benevolent pachyderm. 
But once his mind was made up, he stuck his hoofs 
in the groimd and was immovable. Even Foch 
dashed at him in vain. There was something very 
fine about his character, as there was about all 
American leaders, like Pershing and Sims (and 
about their subordinates), who came to Versailles; 
they seemed determined to make their disinter- 
estedness cancel their inexperience. They were all 
quite untouched by the taint of bad faith and per- 
sonal calculation that seems to load the air where 
the great are. In the Great War the New World 
not only came to redress the balance of the Old, 
but to set it an example. 

During the first half of the month of February, 
the German scheme of attack became clearer. The 
Allied and the German lines formed an angle, and 
the German divisions in large masses began to ac- 
cumulate towards the point of the angle : here also 
appeared Von Hutier, at the head of an army. He 
was a specialist in surprise attacks ; and at the cap- 
ture of Riga, in the preceding autumn, the Ger- 
mans had used a new manoeuvre invented by him. 
As soon as he appeared the Grand Etat-Major 
9 81 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

circulated a minute analysis of the Riga attack.' 
Instead of collecting their attacking divisions in 
front of the point at which it was aimed to break 
through, these were kept very far back from the 
line, and brought up to the point stealthily the 
night before; so that the enemy, though he might 
guess the region, could not guess exactly where. 
While these divisions were at this distance from 
the line, they practised over ground artificially 
made to resemble the real point of attack. This 
sudden concentration was an invention appropri- 
ate to the German genius for secret and tireless 
organisation. 

Foch in effect said to the Executive War Board — 
"Ludendorff must launch his mass of attack 
either westward or southward, either towards the 
British side of the angle in the Cambrai region, or 
towards the French side of the angle and the 
Rheims region. But if he is successful and drives 
one or other of these lines back, he himself presents 
an unguarded and open flank; and the more suc- 
cessful he is, and the more he enlarges the angle, the 
longer and therefore the more open and imguarded 
his flank will be. 

"I will, therefore, divide my General Reserve 
^ The historian can find it in the Registry at Versailles. 

82 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

into three portions, of different sizes. The smallest 
portion I will place in Dauphin6e, close to the best 
crossing into Italy: the largest I will concentrate 
round Paris; the third portion I will place round 
Amiens. From the concentration of German troops 
the attack must come in the Rheims or Cambrai 
region; therefore the bulk of the General Reserve 
roimd Paris is best situated to come to the help of 
either region. The Amiens portion stands behind 
the British Fifth Army, the weakest point of the 
line, and ready to support it. The Dauphin^e por- 
tion is situated so as to be able to go to the assist- 
ance of the Swiss or the Italians, in the unlikely 
event of their being attacked, or to rejoin the rest 
of the General Reserve.'" 

Foch did no more than outline the part to be 
played by the General Reserve, for it never was 
to come into existence. Major Grasset quotes 
Napoleon as saying that the art of war is simple 
enough to understand; it is doing it that is difficult. 
The outline of Foch's plan was perfectly simple: 
Ludendorff had formed his mass of manoeuvre near 

* My authority for this account has been questioned. I 
may therefore say that I acted as sole interpreter and as 
joint secretary to the Executive War Board in all its meet- 
ings; heard him say it, and saw him mark the places with 
his blue pencil on the map. 

83 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

the apex of the angle formed by the front in France ; 
it could only be used to drive in the French side of 
the angle or the British. He could only do one of 
two things, push back the British to and over the 
Sonune, or the French over the Aisne towards the 
Mame; in either case he exposed himself to a 
coimter-attack on his open flank^ from Foch's mass 
of manoeuvre concentrated round Paris. Which- 
ever he did, he had delivered himself into Foch's 
hands. 

In March he chose the British side and fiimg 
himself at Gough's Fifth Army. Ludendorff has 
also told us why he chose this line of attack; the 
Allied line was weakest there, and he chose the line 
of least resistance. 

His strategy was the "buffalo strategy" Foch 
has always mocked. For Foch first attracted 
attention twenty years ago when he taught his 
pupils of the French Staff College that Moltke, 
acting on a fixed plan, adopted blindfold, ought to 
have been beaten in 1870 and only won by luck.^ 
In his various public utterances made since the 
Armistice, he has invariably lavished praise on the 
German soldier ("ce sont d'admirables soldats") 

^ See Les principes de la Guerre, by Colonel Foch (Berger- 
Levrault, Paris), Ch. VIII. , " La suret6 strat^gique." 

84 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

and organisation, but always derided "la strategic 
d'outre-Rhin." 

Ludendorff's plan, thus fixed, the prescience of 
Foch had divined when he intended to put the bulk 
of the General Reserve round Paris and Amiens. 

II The buffalo was rushing into the trap. But the 
j General Reserve was never constituted, so Foch 
never carried out his plan. 

The letters sent to the Commanders-in-Chief 
by the Executive War Board, asking them to con- 
tribute their quota to the General Reserve, were 
dated February 6'; by February 19 the French and 
Italian answers were received, assenting. 

On February 22 Sir Douglas Haig and Petain 
met at the Grand Quartier-G6neral and arranged 
another scheme of defence on a completely different 
principle to that of the General Reserve. It was 
the principle that if one army was attacked the 
other should assist by taking over part of its line. 
Under the General Reserve Plan, an authority 
higher than any of the Commanders-in-Chief de- 
cided what assistance one of them could receive 
from the other. Under the arrangement of Feb- 
ruary 22 every Commander-in-Chief decided for 

^ I adjusted the French and English text of these letters 
as the Executive War Board decided it. 

85 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

himself what assistance he would give a colleague. 
It was the principle upon which the offensives 
against the Germans had been conducted in France, 
and which the Military Representative at Ver- 
sailles had considered was unsuited to a defensive 
plan. 

This new scheme certainly would not have been 
initiated by Petain, as it was, without the assent of 
M. Clemenceau. But it was -unknown to Foch, 
who waited patiently for the English answer the 
whole of February. 

The fighting was expected to begin the first week 
in March, when the plan of campaign was adopted 
during the session of the Supreme War Council. 
I "You will be attacked on March i," Clemenceau 
had said to Haig during a dialogue, if this conver- 
sation could be called a dialogue, where Clemen- 
ceau never stopped even to take breath, and Haig 
never uttered a single word.^ 

On March 3 (and it is the knowledge of this date 
that shows how well informed Major Grasset is) a 
letter from Sir Douglas, dated March 2, written in 
answer to a letter dated February 6, and therefore 

^ They were standing next to where I sat writing at a 
table. The contrast between the whirling volubility of the 
one, and the blank muteness of the other, was amusing. 

86' 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

evidently kept back, reached the Executive War 
Board refusing to contribute any divisions to the 
General Reserve, except British divisions in Italy, 
which were not under his command.' The his- 
torian is referred to this letter, and should observe 
the style and thought of the British Commander- 
dn-Chief. The Italian Military Representative 
immediately declared the Italian contribution to 
the General Reserve must be considered as with- 
drawn, if there was to be no English contribution. 
The General Reserve thus vanished, and with it 
the Executive War Board faded away, for it had 
been brought into existence to handle the General 
Reserve, and for no other purpose. Though for 
some time it continued to discuss, it never was to 
act. Major Gr asset says, not quite accurately — 
"Finally, in their Session of March 3, and in 
spite of the energetic protests of General Foch, 
the Council went so far as to decide upon an im- 
portant reduction of the Inter-Allied Reserve, and 
to envisage nothing more than resisting, as well as 

^ My accuracy as to this letter has been questioned: I 
may mention I myself translated it into French, and com- 
municated it to the French section on its arrival ; and acted 
as interpreter and secretary to the meeting of the Executive 
War Board which discussed it, and drafted the minutes of 
the meeting. 

87 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

might be, the German effort, though this threat- 
ened to be of the most formidable type." 
■ , The refusal of Haig, which was commimicated 
^to Mr. Lloyd George from Versailles, came as a 
surprise and a violent shock to him; but it cannot 
altogether have come as a surprise to Sir Henry 
Wilson. 

The Supreme War Council had created the Exe- 
cutive War Board, with the two Commanders-in- 
Chief in attendance, and without even a protest 
on their part. In any event, even if they had pro- 
tested, it was an order. This order they determined 
to disregard, and fight the battle according to the 
method they preferred, as separate commanders of 
separate armies, instead of as one army, because 
one army meant an authority above their own. 
But to evade it, each used a different manner. 
Petain answered Foch's letter of February 6, 
granted the nimiber of divisions demanded of him, 
and, I believe, identified and even allocated them. 
They were the Third Army imder Htimbert, and 
the First under Debeney, between fourteen and 
twenty divisions. He relied on his colleague, who 
had had previous experience in evading these or- 
ders, to make this obedience void. At the Calais 
Conference on February 27, 19 17, Lloyd George 

88 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

I had established Nivelle as supreme authority over 

I Haig. When Nivelle issued orders to him, a few 
days later on March 4, Haig repudiated his author- 
ity, causing a serious crisis between us and oiur 
French ally/ But he had then made his repudia- 
tion immediate, and not waited for the attack, 
which Nivelle had fixed for April, to begin. He 
now improved on this method. He did not even 
protest at the supreme authority placed above him 
by the Supreme War Coimcil, but kept back his 

'^repudiation till March 3, that is to say, till the 
fighting was about to begin, and it would be im- 

Ijpossible to replace him. These were the coils in 
which Mr. Lloyd George was constantly wrapped, 
and against which he struggled so resolutely, amid 
such a storm of obloquy. 

The Protocol, the Minutes, as we say, of the 
plan between him and General Petain as drawn up 
at the Grand Quartier- General, are contained in 
docimient No. 5476 of the Operations Branch of 
the G. H. Q. (3ieme Bureau). This document has 
only to be placed next to the Resolutions of the 
Supreme War Coimcil, creating the Executive War 

^ For the full text of the French Prime Minister's protest 
to Mr. Lloyd George, on March 6, see Appendix B, "Unity 
of Command in 1917." 

89 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

Board and the General Reserve, for the inconsist- 
ency to appear. It was impossible to carry out 
both plans. 

This arrangement was made on February 22, 
but this document, No. 5476 of the 3ieme Bureau, 
Grand Quartier-G6neral, was not drawn up till 
March 5, and is dated March 5, and reached Ver- 
sailles much later. There must be some reason for 
this delay in making minutes, which should natur- 
ally be made as soon as possible after the event 
they record. It is easy to find the reason. Petain, 
the Commander-in-Chief at the front, did not want 
Foch, the Chief of the Staff, at the Boulevard des 
InvaHdes in Paris, to know of this agreement, 
which destroyed the scheme of the General Reserve, 
till it was too late to protest. The fighting was 
expected to begin in March, and the drafting of the 
minute was delayed till then. So was Haig's answer 
to a letter dated February 6. So far as Foch was 
concerned, the agreement was a secret agreement, 
and he was therefore the victim of an intrigue, a 
I most himiiliating intrigue. Speaking of the catas- 
trophe that was to follow, Major Grasset says; 
"There was needed this extreme peril and the 
crushing force of this blow to open men's eyes and 
to silence certain vanities." Mr. Belloc has here 

90 




@ Press Illustrating Service, Inc. 
MARSHAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

misunderstood and therefore mistranslated Major 
Grasset's allusion. 

The Supreme War Coimcil, in a Session held in 
London in the first half of March, assented in effect 
to the rejection of the plan adopted at the previous 
Session. For it gave only the eleven Anglo-French 
divisions as General Reserve to the Executive War 
Board, which faded away. Foch protested to the 
Supreme War Council, demanded a supreme com- 
mand with an Inter-Allied Staff, and was heavily 
snubbed. Clemenceau forbade Foch to argue with 
Haig about his refusal to contribute to the General 
Reserve. But on March 15, before the Supreme 
War Coimcil separated, Foch, with his own terrible 
and leonine vehemence of speech, warned the dis- 
mayed leaders of the Alliance of the coming disaster, 
if they persisted in divided command and scattered 
reserves. This was six days before the battle. 

The scheme of the General Reserve, which Sir 
Douglas thus rejected, gave him the right to the 
assistance of his two colleague Commanders-in- 
Chief, and a delicately adjusted, almost automatic, 
machine, the Executive War Board, for asserting 
this right. With this machine he could extract 
their reserves from these colleagues in the quantity 
and in the way he reqiiired, with an impartial arbi- 

91 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

trator, the Executive War Board, to fix the quan- 
tity and method as soon as he appealed to it, and 
which, before even he appealed to it, weeks before 
the battle, had already contemplated putting assist- 
ance that would probably have been equal to a 
third or a half of his whole army in close proximity 
to it. He rejected this plan, and with P6tain 
adopted another plan of operations. The Versailles 
principle was to treat the three fronts, British, 
French, and Italian, as one front, and to engage the 
enemy wherever he came on, with British, French, 
and Italian forces. Haig and Petain adopted quite 
another principle; according to the old method, 
each of the fronts, British or French, was treated 
as a separate front, and the enemy might be en- 
gaged under certain contingencies by each army, 
French or British, separately. There can be no 
doubt about the plan of operations they adopted; 
for it was embodied in a written agreement made 
between the two.' Presimiably in most battles 
commanders have kept their main idea inside their 
own head, but in this case it exists in writing. 

The agreement provides that they are to assist 
each other, but in one way, and one way only : the 

^ The historian can easily find it in the Registry at Ver- 
sailles. The reference number in the Registry is file 26/E./6. 

92 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

extreme French left met the extreme British right 
at Barisis, the point of junction of the two hnes. 
Whichever of the two was attacked, the other, in 
case of need, agreed to help his colleague by ex- 
tending his own line, but by extension only. The 
helper would thus relieve a certain number of his 
colleague's division, who would be released for use 
elsewhere. But it was by extension only. If we 
were attacked, for example, on our left, at Ypres, 
the French relieved divisions on our extreme right ; 
but they were not bound to come and fight shoulder 
to shoulder with us at Ypres. Similarly, if Petain 
was attacked on his extreme right, in Switzerland, 
for example, we were imder an obligation to begin 
taking over the line on his extreme left, but not to 
fight shoulder to shoulder with the French in the 
Jura. The exact dimensions this extension of either 
the French left or the British right was to take had 
to be left unfixed, and depended on the judgment 
and goodwill of the helper. Further, P6tain natur- 
ally did not want to be called upon to take over 
portions of line on which a battle was actually 
proceeding. So he stipulated — and the stipulation 
is expressed in the plainest terms — that he was only 
boimd to extend his extreme left if we were attacked 
at a portion of our line other than our extreme right. 

93 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

Though the Supreme War Council had issued 
orders to all Commanders-in-Chief to send all plans 
of operations at once to Versailles, this agreement 
could not be obtained from G.H.Q. till the fight- 
ing had actually begim. On its arrival these criti- 
cisms were at once made of it. 

First: Either P6tain or Haig, according to this 
scheme, might have to fight Ludendorff alone, 
which was impossible. For his 200 divisions must 
sooner or later by their mere rotation (roulemeni) 
in the line, and quite apart from their mass, have 
exhausted even Petain's 97, still more Haig's 57. 
In the event, Ludendorff burst the British with one 
giant charge of his whole mass. 

Secondly: Neither Petain nor Haig was bound 
to make any preparation beforehand to assist the 
other, because neither could know whether he was 
to be helper or helped. In the event, neither of 
them did make any preparation, as the map' shows 
at a glance. 

^ See map at end of book. " Map showing position of all 
Allied Divisions in France in the third week of March, 1918, 
before the battle of St. Quentin." The position of the Brit- 
ish divisions was obtained from G.H.Q. ; the position of the 
French divisions from the French section of the Supreme 
War Council, and is undoubtedly correct. I mention this 
because the G.H.Q. map was marked to show a number of 

94 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

Thirdly: As the helper was left to decide the 
amount of help, it was certain that the Com- 
manders-in-Chief would haggle and dispute, every 
general by nature clinging to his reserves like a 
miser to his money. Naturally, for the safety of 
the troops for which he is responsible is his para- 
moimt motive. So delay would occur that might 
be disastrous. In the event, there was prolonged 
haggling, and consequent disastrous delay. 

Fourthly: As Petain was bound to assist Haig 
by extending his left, and in that way only, and as 
it was stipulated that Petain was not bound to 
make this extension if the German attack occurred 
at Haig's extreme right, it followed that Haig had 
dispensed the French from assisting him at all if 
he was attacked on his extreme right, even if 
attacked by the whole German army. In the event, 
he was attacked by the whole German army, on 
his extreme right. 

In a word, Haig's plan of operations contem- 
plated that, under certain contingencies, he would 
fight Ludendorff , who was more than three times as 
strong as he was, all alone. Those contingencies 

French divisions round Paris, which were really near Rheims 
and the Aisne. This struck our officers who had charge of 
these maps at Versailles very forcibly. 

95 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

arose. Ludendorff attacked him from Barisis 
northwards with his whole army. If the historian 
is incredulous about this plan, as he may well be, 
he is referred to the document. Besides, in conse- 
quence of this plan, the British army, as will be 
shown later, did in fact engage the entire Ger- 
man army for a whole week with assistance from 
the French so small and tardy as to be almost 
useless. 

There appears also to have been a further verbal 
agreement by which Haig tindertook, whatever 
happened, not to require any help from Petain 
till the fourth day of the battle. So the French 
Operations officers at Versailles declared most em- 
phatically, and, though there was means of check- 
ing their statement, there is no reason whatever 
to reject it. 

The press, the scene of so many of our military 
triumphs, raised the clamoiir, and still in some very 
partial quarters continues to do so, that this soldier 
was not reinforced by the politicians as he ought 
to have been, and was kept short of men. The 
only way in which the politicians could have en- 
abled this soldier to execute the plan of operations 
he had himself conceived would have been to treble 
his army. 

96^ 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

General Staffs, in times of modem war, when the 
nation becomes an army, are the most powerful 
organisms in the State, for almost every one must 
obey them, and they tend to supersede the State 
itself. Through their huge patronage they lay 
hands on the legislature and the press. But above 
all, public opinion is theirs to shape it as they 
please; for that great two-handed engine of decep- 
tion, the censorship which conceals the truth, and 
propaganda which creates the false, is in their 
hands. This machine, created originally for one 
purpose, to deceive the enemy, had come, perhaps 
imavoidably, to be used for deceiving everybody, 
soldiers and civilians. Keeping up the morale, in 
;the jargon of the war, is the purpose of this second 
deception, as if men who give their lives with such 
generosity, without hesitation, needed lies as a 
further inducement to do so. It is an easy and 
efficient engine to work, for people are left far more 
iminstructed, and are far more misled by news- 
papers in our enlightened period than ever they 
were by rumour in the past, before the spread of 
education had made it possible to induce people 
to believe anything by printing it. Germans were 
siire half London was btimt and in ashes ; and we 
have never heard of German victories, like Pil- 
' 97 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

kallen, when they took as many as 100,000 Russian 
prisoners. 

But falsehood, however indispensable (and per- 
haps in this case it is unavoidable), exacts its price; 
and here it recoils in an unexpected direction. 
Generals can have great reputations which are 
entirely artificial. They do not have to win vic- 
tories or campaigns; the subject press bureau and 
the tame herd of special correspondents or special 
press agents^ do it for them. It is in the High 
Command, and not in the line, that the art of 
camouflage is most practised, and reaches to high- 
est flights. All chiefs everyivhere are now kept 
painted, by the busy work of nimiberless publicists, 
so as to be mistaken for Napoleons — at a distance. 
Canny Scots soon discover that having the brother 
of the editor of the leading newspaper of the major- 
ity party of the legislature as a chaplain-general is 
a greater piece of luck than breaking the German 
line, and a long visit from an influential newspaper 
proprietor preferable to a good plan of operations. 
Criticism and doubt becomes scandalous or illegal 
outside the armies, and (quite rightly) indiscipline 
and insubordination within them. It ceases to be 
necessary for Generals to win even wars ; they will 

^ See Appendix A. 

98 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 191 8 

be almost as victorious if they lose them. This is 
not fanciful, for almost the whole German people 
believe Hindenburg imvanquished and invincible; 
they believe he never was defeated, but broke off 
the fight and submitted because Germany's allies 
deserted her. In spite of the Armistice, he is just 
as much a conqueror to-day as when his authority 
extended from Dunkirk to Kieff; and before we 
deride them as dupes, it is as well to remember that 
a great many sensible people here are sure that the 
retreat of the Fifth Army in March, 19 18, was 
an ingenious manoeuvre, and most people consider 
that what the Germans call the Bloodbath (das 
Blutbad) of the Somme was an Allied triumph, 
though, being almost twice as strong as the Ger- 
mans, they could only gain a few miles of ground 
at a stupendous cost. Joffre, whose mistakes in the 
first weeks of the war nearly lost it, remains seated 
in the hearts of the French as a national hero, 
however much commissions of inquiry may expose 
him.' No doubt if Haig had been driven into the 
sea in April, 191 8, as seemed likely, he would have 

^ See the report of the " Commission parlementaire d'en- 
qu6te sur le role et la situation de la m^tallurgie en France," 
which made a searching inquiry into the conduct of opera- 
tions in August, 19 14. 

99 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

remained just as immortally glorious and some one 
else would have been to blame. A new doctrine 
has come to prevail that Commanders-in-Chief 
can do no wrong and are not responsible. 

Statesmen, of course, know the truth. Any one 
in the room at the Supreme War Council who knew 
these heroes remote from their godlike state, bright 
pomp of swarming obsequious Staff Officers, mil- 
lionaire A.D.C.s and attendant Major-Gen- 
erals, motors and moimted orderlies, secretaries 
and cooks, with the foimtains of official eulogy 
playing on them in ceaseless glittering streams, 
could measure their real stature, in all its naked 
and tragic mediocrity: naked, because the working 
of their confused, slow, and narrow minds revealed 
itself without chance of concealment in those keen 
debates with masterly heads like Sonnino or Foch ; 
and tragic, because these incapables and intriguers, 
thus decorated and exalted, disposed haphazard 
of all those brilliant young generations that were 
being mowed in swathes by the German scythe. 
If any one could do so, very much more could 
minds as quick and piercing as Mr. Lloyd George's, 
or deep and experienced as Lord Milner's, estimate 
them. But these fictitious conquerors are unshak- 
able and cannot be uprooted, so deep is their real 

100 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

hold on the army and the nation/ The French 
Prime Minister protested in vain to Mr. Lloyd 
George in 191 7 against Haig's "repeated tenden- 
cies to evade the instructions given to him," and 
his "constantly renewed tendency to call into ques- 
tion the plan of operations adopted by the Confer- 
ence, " but Mr. Lloyd George could do nothing. 
It becomes almost impossible to displace these 
Napoleons, whatever their incompetence, because 
of the enormous public support created by hiding 
or glossing failure, and exaggerating or inventing 
success. 

This is probably true of every belligerent. Sal- 
andra, for example, the Italian Prime Minister, was 
overthrown in 191 6 for daring to doubt Cadoma, 
though Cadorna had never done anything but fail."^ 
Salandra the politician ventured to think Cadoma 
the soldier was not invincible, on no other ground 
except that Cadoma was always beaten. So Ca- 
doma continued muddling away thousands of lives 
in his blimdering offensives, and his bubble repu- 
tation continued to grow bigger and brighter till 

^ See the account of Haig's refusal to obey the decisions of 
the Calais Conference in 191 7, in Appendix B, "Unity of 
Command in 191 7." 

^ See La Nostra Guerra, by Generale E. Vigano; Firenze: 
F. Le Monnier. 

loi 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

Caporetto burst it ; even then his sycophants in the 
press clamoured that the defeat and the loss of half 
a million men was not due to Cadoma, but to some- 
thing else. 

And no one else was as loyal and long-suffering 
as we were. Falkenhayn had to go after Verdun, 
and Nivelle after the Chemin des Dames, in spite 
of all their laurels. But Haig survived the Somme,^ 
and Passchendaele, and St. Quentin, and their 
huge slaughters, next to any one of which the 
Chemin des Dames failure — ^where Nivelle only 
just missed — is inconsiderable or trivial. Haig's 
reputation survived the loss of very nearly half a 
million men in Picardy in 191 6, and another loss of 
very nearly half a million men in Flanders in 191 7 ; 
when, in a speech made at the end of 191 7, Mr. 
Lloyd George hinted at dissatisfaction with otir 
High Command, a universal cry of reprobation 
went up from the whole coimtry. He called this 
superstition the military Moloch.' We cannot 
complain if we so blindly adored the idol that de- 
voured us. 

But the most insidious and worst effect of this 
so highly organised falsity is on the generals them- 
selves: modest and patriotic as they mostly are, 

^ To Repington. See Repington's Diaries, Oct. 21, 1916. 

102 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

and as most men must be to take up and follow the 
noble profession of arms, they themselves are ulti- 
mately affected by these universal illusions, and, 
reading it every morning in the paper, they also 
grow persuaded they are thimderbolts of war and 
infallible, however much they fail, and that their 
maintenance in command is an end so sacred that 
it justifies the use of any means. There were 
strange happenings in London when Sir Henry 
Wilson succeeded General Robertson as Chief of 
the Imperial General Staff. The War Cabinet took 
their decision on Thursday, February 14; but Gen- 
eral Robertson, not for the first time, treated them 
and their decisions as if they did not exist. For 
several mornings Sir Henry went down to the War 
Office to find his room still occupied by General 
Robertson, carrying on as usual and ignoring him 
entirely. As is evident from his press. General 
Robertson, who had felt strong enough to try and 
turn Mr. Lloyd George out with the help of Rep- 
ington on February 12, anticipated that the House 
of Commons, which was to discuss the new appoint- 
ment on Tuesday, February 19, would dismiss the 
Prime Minister who had dared to dismiss him ; as 
indeed Robertson's chief Staff Officer, Maurice, 
was publicly to incite the House of Commons to 

103 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

I do in May. It was the duty of the Secretary of 
State for War, Lord Derby, to eject him; but he 
had pledged himself to both sides, and remained 
timidly neutral, tremulously tmcertain which cause 
it would be most advantageous to desert, and wait- 
ing anxiously to see which party was the strongest. 
It was not until the House of Commons, on Tues- 
day afternoon, February 19, omitted to carry out a 
revolution in his favour and the Army Coimcil also 
omitted to "go over the top" (as Repington, on 
February 11, exhorted them to do), that General 
Robertson abdicated and took up the new com- 
mand to which he had been appointed. Sir William 
Robertson sincerely believed his departure was a 
national catastrophe.^ 

These various conditions, of which this great 
deceit is the greatest, at last emancipates all Gen- 
eral Staffs from all control. They no longer live 
for the nation: the nation lives, or rather dies, for 
them. Victory or defeat ceases to be the prime 
interest. What matters to these semi-sovereign 

^ See his letter, dated Feb. 25, to Repington, which I have 
set out in Appendix A, See also his curious letter, dated 
Feb. 19, 1918, written from the War Office, and quoted in 
full in the issue of the Morning Post of Feb. 22, 1918, p. 6, 
column 7: "I have done what I have done in the interest 
of my countrymen," he says. 

104 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

corporations is whether dear old Willie or poor old 
Harry is going to be at their head, or the Chantilly 
party prevail over the Boulevard des Invalides 
party. So much is this the case that two branches 
of a staff can get more hostile to each other than 
to the enemy, and, for example, at the Grand 
Quartier-General, Intelligence and Operations spent 
their time thwarting each other. The Central 
Powers (as can be seen very clearly from Count 
Czemin's Memoirs) suffered from these conditions 
even more than the Allies: the German General 
Staff treated Emperors and Chancellors as if they 
were valets, claimed to control everything, even the 
birth-rate, and ruined their country by overriding 
Bethmann-Hollweg in the winter 1916-1917. "The 
misfortunes of Germany and Austria," says Czer- 
nin,' a temperate judge, well placed to see things 
as a whole, "arose from the acts which the military 
party imposed upon the Government." Bem- 
storff, the able German Ambassador in the U. S. A., 
also attributes the failure of Germany to its 
soldiers, who ought to have been kept "more 
thoroughly within boimds, just as they were by 

' See In the World War, by Count Ottokar Czernin (Cas- 
sell, 1919), and My Three Years in America, by Count 
Bernstorff (Skeffington, 1920). 

105 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

Bismarck." But tough and slippery as they might 
be with us, Mr. Lloyd George was more so, and 
kept war a function of politics, and victory as the 
end of war. 

Before the campaign of 191 8 began, of the plan 
of campaign which may be attributed to Mr. Lloyd 
George, Foch, and Wilson, one part had been pub- 
lished to the world certainly with the hearty ap- 
proval, and very probably at the instigation, of 
the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Robertson ; 
the other half had been nullified by an intrigue 
of which the French Commander-in-Chief was 
the author, and the British Commander-in-Chief the 
instrument, and to which the other leaders of the 
Alliance assented or were compelled to assent. 

Meanwhile in front of our line the mightiest 
army ever assembled by the mightiest military 
nation of our age, and perhaps the mightiest army 
any nation has ever put forth, was preparing to 
attack; commanded by idolised, and hitherto in- 
vincible, chiefs ; exultant over its fabulous victories 
in the East, where its colossal adversary lay 
shattered and dismembered; elate with hope, 
though with a veteran hope, sobered by years of 
struggle against great odds, and no longer fresh 
and gay as during the first intoxicating weeks of the 

106 



THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN FOR 1918 

war; confident that with one last and collected 
effort they could repay themselves for incalculable 
sufferings and losses, and lay the world at their 
country's feet. On March i, the day before Haig 
wrote his letter destroying the General Reserve, a 
German General, Von Morgen, met Hindenburg 
and Ludendorff at the Grossen Haupt Quartier, 
then at Kreuznach. Hindenburg said to him 

j jubilantly — 

! "The drama is nearing its close; now comes the 
last act. "^ 

^ See Meinen Truppen Heldenkdmpfen, by General- 
lieutnant Curt von Morgen (Berlin: Mittler, 1920). 



107 



Ill 

THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 



109 



Ill 

The Battle of St. Quentin 

The Allies had gone back to the position in which 
they had been during the preceding autumn, and 
the consequences their three leaders — Mr. Lloyd 
George, Sir Henry Wilson, and Foch — had rightly 
anticipated and feared from that position unrolled 
themselves at once, and in an aggravated form; 
aggravated because only one part of their military 
plans was left intact — the extension of the British 
line. This portion of their design was sound, even 
advantageous, if connected with the Executive 
War Board and the General Reserve. It was cal- 
culated to draw the enemy to where we could hit 
him best, and it did draw him; but though the 
reserve was never formed, and the Board never had 
any fimctions, the British line remained extended ; 
and there from its extremity at Barisis northwards 
to Goiizeaucourt, lay our Fifth Army imder Gough, 
composed of only fourteen infantry divisions and 

III 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

three cavalry divisions, strung out over 42 miles, 
on an average front of 6750 yards to each division ; 
this was (for the British army) very thin. The 
Third Army, Byng's, immediately to the north, 
had one division on every 4200 yards. 

While within the apex of the great angle formed 
by the front Ludendorff was concentrating his re- 
serves, a mass of manoeuvre of eighty divisions, 
the Allied line near this apex, the French running 
along the Aisne, and the British facing St. Quentin, 
had not the support of even the most moderate 
Inimiber of divisions within reach. The reserve di- 
pisions of the Allies, as the map at the end of this 
fvolume shows, were scattered everywhere on no 
[evident principle, even to the civilian eye, except 
that of trying to be strong everywhere, with the 
result of being really strong nowhere. Gough's 
j army, in front of St. Quentin, was helpless, as can 
I be seen. But if Ludendorff 's mass of manoeuvre 
had rolled south instead of west, the French were 
hardly less so. 
/ Early in March orders were issued to AUenby 

i^ to advance, and he at once proceeded to execute 
them. Our Eastern attack began. 

The Germans also prepared their onset. The 
German divisions from the East were still flowing 

112 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

into France in March, but had at the beginning of 
the month not yet risen to the level of the Allies. 
On March 13, Ludendorff had 186 divisions at his 
disposal, of which 79 were in reserve ; this gave him 
1,370,000 rifles and 15,700 guns. But the 167 
Allied divisions (58 in reserve) gave them 1,500,000 
rifles and 16,400 gtins.' They still had the odds. 
On March 21, Ludendorff had 192 divisions, of 
which 85 were in reserve; this made him equal in 
rifle strength, but perhaps still inferior in guns.* 

On the night of Wednesday, March 20, the 
villages of Picardy within the enemy lines rang all 
night with the lovely triumphant German battle- 

! songs which the Germans sang, in spite of strict 
orders, as their hosts marched up in the dark for 
1 the last, the Emperor battle; and early on Thurs- 
day, March 21, the innumerable multitude of 

^ These figures have been questioned. They are, of 
course, the figures agreed by the French and British Intelli- 
gence. As such they were furnished by the War Office to the 
War Cabinet, and the historian will find them recorded in 
the Minutes of the Meeting of the War Cabinet held on 
March 13. 

^ The figure 192 is to be found in the Summary of Intelli- 
gence of G.H.Q., No. 446, dated March 22. The Report by 
the War Office to the War Cabinet that the forces were 
equal will be found in the Minutes of the 371st Meeting of 
the War Cabinet held on March 23. 

* 113 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

I Ludendorff's immense mass of manoeuvre flung 
itself against the southern portion of the British 
army like the sea against the shore. The battle 
began "with a crash, " as Ludendorff says, against 
the Fifth and part of the Third British Armies; 
64 German divisions, a total higher than the whole 
British army of 57, were set in motion against this 
sector. On that first day of battle, against two- 
thirds of the line held by Cough's 14 divisions, 40 
of these 64 German divisions were set in motion: 
and against one-fifth of the line held by him. Von 
Hutier brought off his Riga manoeuvre. On the 
Wednesday this sector had had 4 German divisions 
in line; spread fan-wise behind them, with the 
furthest tip of the fan 40 miles away, Von Hutier 
had 19 other divisions. These were brought up in 
the night between the 20th and the 21st of March, 
and the whole 23 were swimg against a front, just 
in front of St. Quentin, of 3 or 4 British divisions. 

/ On the first day the casualties of the Fifth and 

I Third British Armies were estimated at 40,000; 

I but Cough, though his line was badly dented in 
three places, was by no means broken. The Ger- 
mans were still "firmly held in the battle zone." 
The British troops, as the German communiques 
announced, had resisted with their "usual tenac- 

114 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

f I ity." But no soldiers could struggle against this 
avalanche of numbers for ever without being re- 
lieved or receiving reinforcements. All Gough's 
divisions had been engaged on the Thursday. 
Now Haig and Petain's armes were equal to Luden- 
dorff 's, and our Fifth Army the weakest part of the 
line. If their dispositions were such as to afford 
proper support to Gough, their dispositions, and 
they themselves, and their plan, were justified; 
if not, condemned. This result, in a defensive 
action, must be the test. This help could come 
either from the British or French. 

The Despatches of Sir Douglas Haig are written 
in a style very different from his own, as it appears 
in his personal commtmication to the War Cabinet 
and the Supreme War Coimcil, to which the his- 
torian of the war is again earnestly referred. They 
look like the hand of the professional propagandist, 
and are far from candid.' They omit the most im- 
portant facts. One is that Gough learned on 
Thursday, after appealing for help to G.H.Q., 
that he was not to expect any British reinforce- 
ments for seventy-two hours, that is imtil Sunday 

* Rumour — by no means unreliable in so small and intri- 
cate a body as the General Staff — names quite different 
authors, and is corroborated by the evidence of style. 

115 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

morning^ ; that it would not amount to more than 
one division ; and that the second instahnent would 
be another division which would reach him Wed- 
nesday morning. This the Despatches omit. 
Another fact is that the first British reinforcement 
to reach Gough was the 8th Division, which only 
came into action Sunday morning. This the De- 
spatches omit. Another fact is that Gough from 
Thursday, March 21, when the battle began, to 
Thursday, March 28, when he ceased to command 
an army which had ceased to exist, never received 
any other British reinforcements than this single 
j division. Some units of the 35th Division did 
indeed come to his help on Sunday afternoon, but 
were transferred to Byng's Army on Monday. 
This the Despatches omit. Another fact is that not 
only were no general directives issued to Gough 
before the battle, but that during the whole week 
iof the battle he received no orders or directions 
from G.H.Q. at all, and had only one or two com- 
mimications with it : he was left almost entirely to 
himself, and to act on his own initiative. This the 
Despatches omit. But their language not only 
omits: it also suggests. "It became both possible 

^ See Appendix C, "General Gough's Confidential Re- 
port." 

116 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

and necessary," the Despatches say, "to collect 
additional reserves from the remainder of my front 
and hiirry them to the battlefield ' ' ; also, "my plans 
for collecting reserves from other parts of the 
British front were put into immediate execution." 
This is a stirring picture : the British reserves spring- 
ing to arms and hurrying into battle. But so far 
as the Fifth Army is concerned, it is mythical. A 
single division arrived in a week. And these plans, 
whatever they were, and if they existed at all, 
must be most curious. For this single division, 
coming to assist troops fighting on the Somme, had 
to be brought all the way from St. Omer. The 
plans that can produce such a result must be worth 
publication, and should not be left to moulder in 
obscurity. Even the second instalment promised 
on Thursday 21st, and due on Wednesday 27th, 
never came. Haig refused to send any troops 
south of the Somme, where the remainder of the 
Fifth Army were then fighting. Gough was just 
abandoned. 

Then there were the French — Petain with his 
ninety-seven divisions. Petain, of course, accord- 
ing to the joint plan of operations. Sir Douglas's 
own plan, was not boimd to give any help at all, 
for the attack was on our extreme right; besides, 

117 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

by his verbal agreement, he was not bound, what- 
ever happened, to afford us any assistance for the 
first three days of the battle. "On different occa- 
sions as the battle developed, " says the Despatches 
"I discussed with him the situation and the policy 
to be followed by the Allied army." This is a 
courteous expression of a disagreeable fact. P6tain 
did not stand on his rights, and British G.H.Q. 
and the Grand Quartier did begin discussing how 
many French divisions Retain would give, but 
I Retain maintained that this was not Ludendorff's 
main attack, which was to be towards Rheims, 
where a violent prehminary bombardment had 
'taken place. This feint of Ludendorff was, of 
course, meant to divide the two wills which were 
opposed to his own, and it did. On Saturday morn- 
ing the two Commanders-in-Chief were still argu- 
ing, and Retain had got no further than granting 
three divisions. General Clive, head of our Mili- 
tary Mission at the Grand Quartier-G^neral, 
expressed their usual relations very happily. Clive 
said, "Haig and Petain were like two horsecopers, 
one of whom is prepared to give more than he offers, 
and the other to accept less than he asks,'" and 

^ He said this to Repington. See Repington's Diaries, 
Oct. 8, 1917. 

118 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

this relation they maintained even during the 
battle. Meanwhile, on Friday, the front of our 
Fifth Army had given way under the pressure of 
the enormous masses in front of it, and Gough, 
who so far had received no reinforcements of any 
kind, British or French, gave the order to retreat, 
necessarily bringing back the Third Army with 
him. Mr. Lloyd George, at the Saturday meeting 
of the War Cabinet, expressed his regret over the 
General Reserve so bitterly and emphatically that 
the secretary made a record of it. 

During the night between Friday 22nd and 
Saturday 23rd a single French division, the 125th, 
arrived on the battlefield without guns and fifty 
rounds of ammimition a man only. They had 
marched far and fast, and with a few gallant com- 
panies from our i8th Division, coimter-attacked 
(with no success) on the Crozat Canal at 6 a.m. on 
Saturday. With it was the ist French Cavalry 
Division, which seems subsequently to have been 
dismoimted and amalgamated with it. They were 
the first reinforcement to reach the Fifth Army. 
This the Despatches omit, but take refuge in their 
imf ailing magniloquence. "As the result of a 
meeting held in the afternoon of March 23, " they 
make Sir Douglas say, "arrangements were made 

119 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

for the French to take over as rapidily as possible 
the front held by the Fifth Army south of Peronne, 
and for the concentration of a strong force of 
French divisions on the southern portion of the 
battle-front." At the hour when these arrange- 
ments were made, the "strong force" amoimt to 
this one tired and almost unarmed division. But 
Ludendorff did not wait on these arrangements; 
Von Hutier's army had been sweeping forward 
during Friday and the morning of Saturday, driv- 
ing before it Gough's army, which was losing its 
a cohesion more and more. At midday on Saturday 
I the Germans had found a gap at Ham and crossed 
(the Somme; so that the sector the Allied Com- 
fmanders decided on Saturday afternoon that the 
French should take over had already been occupied 
by the Germans when the decision was taken. Only 
the "usual tenacity" of the British troops had kept 
! Von Hutier till Saturday evening reaching the objec- 
.1 tives assigned to his troops for Thursday evening. 
The Despatches never analyse the composition 
this "strong force of French divisions" was to 
have, nor mention the date of its arrival. This is 
left conveniently vague, and the battle thus no less 
conveniently unintelligible. The Despatches do 
not mention the arrival of the 125th French divi- 

120 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

sion on Saturday morning, and units of the 9th and 
lOth on Saturday afternoon; that only the 62nd 
French division and elements of the 22nd arrived 
on Sunday; that only the 133rd French division 
arrived on Monday; that only the 35th Division 
arrived on Tuesday; and that only the 56th, 162nd, 
and 1 66th arrived on Wednesday, March 27. 

Thus, during this week of continuous fighting, 
when we were attacked by the whole German army, 
only ten French divisions came into action, and 
then, in General Gough's own words, "without 
their guns, their transport, or any sufficient signal 
or staff organisation," and probably incomplete. 
This is the "strong force" of the Despatches, and 
these the moments of its arrival. The published 
French official accounts conceal these precise num- 
bers and dates no less than the British, and for the 
same reason. Given the nimibers engaged, this 
assistance is so small and tardy as to be almost 
useless. Therefore the scheme of co-operation 
between the two commanders was such that the 
'German army was able to engage the British army, 
about a third of its own size, almost quite alone for 
a whole week. This condemns their leadership, and 
this is the reason these numbers and dates are 
unpublished. 

121 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

If a look is taken at the map, and the scattered 
distribution of Pe tain's reserves in the third week 
of March, ^ it is surprising that even this number 
were able to reach the battlefield. This assistance 
would have been smaller and later still but for the 
headlong ardour with which the French army and 
divisional commanders hurled their troops into 
battle as soon as they could get them to the battle- 
field, and the energy with which the French trans- 
port organisation poured them on to it. The 
French generals rushed on to the battlefield almost 
( alone. On Simday morning, Himibert, who was to 
command a French army, burst into Fifth Army 
Headquarters. Gough said to him — 

"I hope you are bringing me an army.** 

Htimbert replied — 

"I am, but I have only got my standard-bearer 
with me." (" Je n'ai que mon f anion.") 

This help was much earlier than had been con- 
sidered possible on the first day of the battle, when 
Gough seems to have thought that, after the Satur- 
day instalment, Tuesday would be the day on 
which the second instalment of French divisions 
would reach him. 

The error in the G.H.Q. map that came to Ver- 

* See Map at end of book. 

122 




GENERAL PETAIN 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

sailles, on which the French reserves, actually near 
Rheims and the Aisne at the outset of the battle, 
were marked as being near Paris, is most curious. 
For if Petain had intended to deceive Haig, this is 
exactly the crick he would have practised : he would 
have got him to believe the French army were 
taking risks so as to be in a position to help him, 
while in fact the French army was taking no risks 
but putting itself in a position where it could give 
no immediate help to Haig. If this is the case, 
P6tain first used Haig to get rid of Foch's superior 
command; then induced Haig to enter into the 
necessarily disastrous agreement of February; and 
lastly duped him in the execution of it. 

If either three or four divisions, French or British 
(and not much in a battle where more than 350 
divisions were on that front on both sides), had 
reached Gough on Thursday, March 21, he might 
have been safe. This small figure was only reached 
on Sunday, March 24, more than three days after 
the beginning of the attack. If six divisions had 
reached him on Thursday, March 21, he would 
certainly have been safe. This figure was only 
reached on Monday. This is the opinion of Gen- 
eral Gough himself, expressed a considerable time 
after the writing of his confidential report. 

123 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

According to Foch's projected concentration of 
the General Reserve, more than twenty divisions 
would have massed near Amiens and north of Paris, 
within easy proximity of Gough. 

Thus during the week-end the Germans drove 
on towards Amiens, pushing before them the shreds 
of Gough's army; if they reached Amiens the 
British and French armies were separated, for no 
real communication could be established between 
them on the lower reaches of the Somme below 
Amiens. Once separated, Ludendorff could take 
breath, and fling his mass of manoeuvre of loo 
divisions against each separately and in turn, 
either the reduced British pressed against the 
Channel ports, or the French with a vast front to 
cover. 

During the week-end, therefore, at London, 
Paris, and Versailles, disastrous events were dis- 
cussed and desperate resolutions taken; measures 
for the evacuation of Paris were considered; late on 
Saturday night, Clemenceau telephoned to the 
I President- of the Republic to get ready to leave 
I Paris, with the rest of the Government, for Bor- 
^jdeaux. Clemenceau loudly declared he would 
teght to the Pyrenees, and calculations were made 
iwhether it would be possible to re-embark and save 

124 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

the remainder of the British army. But however 
determined their statesmen might be, the two 
nations might have refused to make a further effort, 
and the fortitude of one might not have endured the 
loss of their capital, or the patience of the other 
the destruction of their great army. The loss of 
Amiens might involve the loss of the war; every- 
thing himg upon it. Victory, therefore, was again 
within the grasp of the Germans. 

Ludendorff proudly says the Germans at St. 
Quentin did what no one else had done in the war. 
But even the Germans must be given their due, and 
he understates his own achievement. After re- 
sisting for nearly two years the attempts of Allied 
armies almost twice their size to break through 
their front, the Germans themselves broke through 
the Allied front with a bare equality of forces, and 
this with a plan of operations that was very faulty, 
and ought to have proved fatal. During the week 
the German Emperor gave Hindenbiu-g a decora- 
tion that has only been given on one other single 
occasion in Prussian history, to Blucher after 
Waterloo; perhaps St. Quentin was the greatest 
German victory of the war, and their greatest 
military operation. 

It is certainly the greatest defeat we have ever 

125 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

I sioffered in our history, measured by any standard. 
For in the month of March, 191 8, in ten days' 
fighting, we had in casualties 8840 (eight thousand, 
eight hundred and forty) officers and 164,881 (one 
himdred and sixty-four thousand, eight htmdred 
and eighty-one) men.^ This aknost reaches July, 
191 6, the first month of the Somme battle, which 
has the record in the war for casualties in a single 
month with 8709 (eight thousand, seven hundred 
and nine) officers and 187,372 (one himdred and 
eighty-seven thousand, three hundred and seventy- 
two) men. Ludendorff, however, did not stop 
bleeding us, and in the next month, April, 19 18, he 
inflicted losses on us of 6709 (six thousand, seven 
himdred and nine) officers and 136,459 (one hun- 
dred and thirty-six thousand, four hundred and 
fifty-nine) men, and in May, 3452 (three thousand, 
four hundred and fifty- two) officers and 65,597 
(sixty-five thousand, five hundred and ninety- 
seven) men. Never before, not during even the 
first three months of the Somme shambles, have 
Englishmen been slain at such rate and on such a 

^ Strictly speaking, these are our casualties for these 
periods on all fronts, but all except the smallest portion were 
in France. The historian will find them in the Statistical 
Abstract of the War previously referred to. 

126 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

scale, and at the end of it, in June, the remainder 
were still on the brink of ruin, from which only 
their "usual tenacity" had saved them. 

The prognostics of Sir Henry Wilson and Foch 
in the preceding autumn had been fulfilled as if by 
programme. The Germans, impelled by a single 
will, had in turn endeavoured to crush the separate 
armies of the Allies, the Italians at Caporetto, and 
the British at St. Quentin, and very nearly sue 
ceeded. The system of three independent Com- 
manders-in-Chief had been disastrous on the 
defensive for just the same reason they had pre- 
dicted, that the help which one Commander-in- 
Chief would give a colleague in danger would be 
either insufficient or too late, or both, and could 
only be decided by a superior authority superior 
to them all. From the first week of March, when 
the plan of a General Reserve was abandoned, 
Gough's army was doomed, given the actual dis- 
position of the reserve division of P6tain and Haig, 
as the map shows. During the fortnight that 
preceded the battle no one on the immediate staff 
of Foch had any doubt that a catastrophe was in- 
evitable, and Foch himself told the Supreme War 
Coimcil so on March 15 in London. The future 
historian of the war can easily satisfy himself of 

127 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

the accuracy of this forecast. There are two docu- 
ments, short and simple, which for this, as well as 
every other battle of the war, tell the story of the 
engagement at a glance: the position of the Allied 
divisions and the Diary of G.H.Q.; these are 
worth for any battle all the mountain of documents 
that exist. The positions for March (which can be 
seen in the map at the end of this volume) show the 
Allied reserves were so disposed that they could not 
reach G ough in time to save him against such an ava- 
lanche, and the Diary of G.H.Q. that they did not. 
Ludendorff to this day does not imderstand his 
f success, and attributes it to surprise. But there 
could not be a battle in which there was less of the 
5 unexpected. As Mr. Lloyd George has already 
I told the world, the British staff at Versailles had 
I worked out the attack exactly as it took place, 
*' except that they placed the main point where the 
, Germans would try and come through a little 
I farther north. This accurate estimate was in the 
main due to Sir Henry Wilson. He had formed his 
staff so as to admit of two distinct branches. One 
branch was Allied, the other Enemy, and it was the 
duty of the Enemy branch to "get into the Ger- 
mans' skins," and to study the attack from their 
point of view. The direction of the coming attack 

128 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

was thus gauged within a few miles, and its volume 
within a few divisions. The conflict between these 
branches was known as the "war game." This 
war game was also played out before Robertson, 
and afterwards before Haig. Robertson asked a 
number of questions, all of which were answered, 
and left looking very annoyed at having such dis- 
agreeable ideas as an attack of this kind forced 
upon him. Haig spoke only once : he asked — 

"What is the meaning of anti-tank defence?" 
and left in the same unbroken silence. There was 
only one error in these calculations. By the rules 
of the war game, Ludendorff ought to have had 
Amiens ; there was one factor in the problem which 
the director in the game. General Studd, had 
not put quite high enough, the proud obstinacy 
of English troops, however foolish their leading. 
These anticipations were a reckoning from prob- 
abilities, made in January. Ludendorff has pub- 
lished his accoimt of the long internal debate in his 
own mind, before he adopted his plan and took 
consequential measures. But as fast as he took 
those measures, Foch discerned his plan in Febru- 
ary.^ As the spring approached the prognostics 

^ I was interpreter and secretary to the Executive War 
Board on all sittings. On reading Ludendorff 's Memoirs, I 

9 129 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

had grown more precise still. General Cox, of 
G.H.Q. Intelligence, not only gave the exact area 
of the attack (a portion of the German line which 
was lying hushed and motionless while the whole of 
the rest of it flared up with raids and artillery 
preparation), but tipped the exact date "on March 
20 or 21." The German strength was, of course, 
known exactly, and its disposition roughly. Even 
the result was not a surprise to some of the very 
few who knew the Allied dispositions as shown in 
the map.^ It did not need particular genius to do 
so, as any one can convince themselves by looking 
at it and imagining a mass of eighty German divi- 
sions in front of Gough's army. 

It might have been far otherwise. The "terrible 
blow," as Major Grasset calls it, which Foch in- 
flicted on the Germans at the Mame in July, 191 8, 
might just as well, and perhaps more effectively, 
have been dealt on the Somme in March. When in 

am struck by the accuracy with which Foch was reading his 
mind in February. On one point only were Foch and Wey- 
gand out. They were always nervous about an outflanking 
movement through Switzerland. Weygand always spoke 
anxiously about the great railway junction at Ulm, con- 
structed for the purpose of suddenly switching masses of 
troops to any part of the Rhine. 
^ See Map at end of book. 

130 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

June Ludendorff crossed the Aisne and prepared to 
cross the Mame, Major Grasset says that Foch, 
then GeneraHssimo, and with power to do what he 
willed, "divined the error the enemy would make," 
and massed his reserves in the "wooded hills of the 
region of Compiegne — Villers-Cotterets," that is 
to say, to the north of Paris. He points out that 
it was an irretrievable mistake of Ludendorff's to 
cross the Aisne with a "master of manoeuvre" like 
Foch in possession of these wooded hills. But 
Ludendorff had committed no less an error in 
March (and Foch had anticipated it), when he 
pushed across the Somme. If Foch had been 
allowed, as he intended, to concentrate the bulk of 
his General Reserve in these same wooded hills of 
Gompiegne, a mass of Allied divisions, issuing from 
them, would have fallen on the German flank in 
March with an even more fatal weight than in 
July. Foch in the summer only returned to his 
original March manoeuvre, just as Ludendorff re- 
turned to his original error. Foch in the spring 
would certainly with his plan have stopped the 
charging German bull dead, and might possibly, 
with a single rapier thrust of consummate deadly 
elegance, have pierced right to his heart, and ended 
him, then and there, for ever. Or our 5th Army 

131 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

might perhaps have played the part the 5th French 
Army, under Berthelot, played at the second Marne, 
and by its very retreat drawn the enemy where the 
counter-attack could club and stun him more 
effectually. 

After the March disaster the defeated Generals 
heard no recriminations. The true spirit of patriot- 
ism in defeat, that never despairs of its cotmtry, 
was shown both by the King and the War Cabinet 
who, with inflexible fortitude, telegraphed on 
Monday to our armies to encourage, to thank, and 
to congratulate them: Mr. Lloyd George, driven 
to desperate expedients by the scheming and 
bimgling of others, boldly swept the home defences 
clean to send every man to France, and dared (as 
he ought never have been compelled to dare) to 
leave this island guarded only by a few brigades, 
so that he let Sir Douglas know he was to be sent 
80,000 men at once, and 82,000 more within three 
weeks. The historian who wants to appreciate the 
energy and courage of the War Cabinet, and what 
a glorious pilot Mr. Lloyd George is in a storm, 
should consult its Minutes at this period. 

Meanwhile, on the night between Saturday and 
Sunday, G.H.Q. and the Grand Quartier-G6neral 
resumed their adjourned debate, the subject being 

132 



THE BATTLE OF ST, QUENTIN 

the size of the "strong force of French divisions" 
that was to come to our help. For now the dyke 
was burst, it began to break down ever3rwhere. 
The cracks in Cough's line that could have been 
filled up on Thursday with a few divisions, had on 
Saturday become fissures, through which the Ger- 
man flood poured in, and increased the pressure on 
the whole of the receding and reeling line. Now on 
Sunday great gaps were appearing in the front of 
the Fifth Army, threatening ultimate disjunction, 
which could only be filled with great forces. On 
Simday Sir Douglas wanted twenty divisions to 
reconstitute the line. Petain had got as far as 
promising twelve; but he only had five on the 
battlefield, trying to take over the line on Gough's 
right, and mixed in a confused fight with what was 
left of our 3rd Corps. His divisions fought furi- 
ously as they saw their sacred soil slipping into the 
hands of the enemy, and villages as yet imtouched 
by the long war breaking into flame, but they were 
insufficient, and they arrived too late. It was the 
essential vice in their own plan — separate com- 
mands and therefore separate reserves — that was 
overthrowing the Allied Commanders. Each, as 
the map shows,' had disposed his troops as if his 
* See Map at end of book, 

133 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

own were the only Allied front, and none other 
existed, and one of the two was bound to suffer, 
especially the smaller of the two. Experience at 
last convinced Sir Douglas of what reasoning had 

J been unable to persuade him. When in 191 7 Mr. 

' Lloyd George had made Nivelle supreme com- 
mander at the Calais Conference on February 27, 

\ Haig had simply repudiated Nivelle 's directions on 

/March 4 when he received them. When in 191 8 
Foch, as President of the Executive War Board, 
had been in reality made supreme commander on 
February i, Haig again repudiated his directions 

kOn March 2. In each of these years unity of com- 

fmand had been frustrated by his refusals, resting 

I 

I on a character of iron tenacity and the most gentle- 

I manly, attractive surface, and on a mind both 

I obtuse and extraordinarily slow.^ The Command- 

I er-in-Chief was a knightly figure, with all the 

I bearing and temper of a leader, but on a very low 

I plane of human intelligence, as elderly cavalry 

men sometimes are. Even on March 14, twelve 

^ Sir Douglas Haig certainly never protested at Versailles 
when the plan of campaign for 19 18 was adopted by the 
Supreme War Council, but it may quite well be that he did 
not understand what was being done. My own impression 
of him during the discussion was that he entirely failed to 
follow what was being discussed 

134 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

days before, he had persisted in London in reject- 
ling the scheme of the General Reserve, and there- 
jfore in effect of a single central command. But 
very early on Sunday, March 24, he telegraphed 
to London asking Mr. Lloyd George to come over 
and arrange for a single Supreme Commander. 
He had never been able to grasp that the system 
of double command might expose him to being 
forced to fight Ludendorff all by himself, and it was 
not till he had been doing so for three days, and 
the prospect of continuing to do so actually opened 
before him, together with the likelihood of being 
driven into the sea, that he submitted to unity of 
Command, and an authority superior to his own, 
for which Mr. Lloyd George had always striven. 

A French writer who was in the publicity section 
of the Grand Quartier-Gen6ral has warned histo- 
rians against accepting too credulously the official 
accounts of the grand Etat-Major, and against the 
"great business of attenuating the truth" he saw 
going on under his eye.' Attenuation is a good 
word, and we should be grateful to its inventor. 

^G.Q.G., Secteur I, by Jean de Pierrefeu (I'Edition 
Frangaise: Paris, 1920): " Cette vaste entreprise d' attenu- 
ation de la v^rit^, que j'ai vue s'accomplir jour a jour sous 
mes yeux." 

135 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

He knew how the facts were cooked, for he was in 
the kitchen. The German General Staff, even in 
its miHtary pubHcation, has continued to season 
and manipulate the original material till it is almost 
unrecognisable. Our official records, also, are not 
innocent of attenuation, and the Despatches, like 
the communiques, may be classed among them. 
The own pen of Sir Douglas Haig has a most in- 
genuous, quite a schoolboy, style, and as far re- 
moved as possible from their deceptive and plaus- 
ible cleverness. Our historians, like the French, 
need warning: the Cambrai Despatches, for ex- 
ample, crumble at one touch of one single authentic 
document, the Diary of G.H.Q.^ These elucida- 
tions may be left to the researches of the historian 
and the judgment of posterity, which is perfectly 
just because it is perfectly indifferent. These en- 
quiries and verdict will partly explain to our de- 

^ The historian can find the Diary of G.H.Q. for Cambrai 
in the Registry at Versailles. What the Despatches conceal 
about Cambrai is that the twenty divisions used in the 
attack between Nov. 20 and Nov. 29, were so handled that 
the signal success of the first attack could not be exploited. 
The Diary of G.H.Q. shows this. There our troops tore a 
great open rent in the German line, then as on several other 
occasions, but with no result, and therefore to no purpose, 
Hindenburg in his Aus Meinem Leben notes how often this 
happened, and is evidently puzzled by it. 

136 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

scendants why the Germans collapsed in France be- 
fore the Allies in 191 8, when the Allies were inferior 
or not much more than equal, and resisted during 
the previous years when the Allies were overwhelm- 
ingly superior. It is a fair conjectuire, from their 
results, that Haig conducted our armies in 1916 
and 191 7 by the same methods as he did in 1918: 
only the campaigns of 19 16 and 19 17 being offen- 
sives, they could, like Cadoma's Isonzo attacks, be 
trumpeted as successes. But in the case of 1918 
an earlier correction of these official fictions is 
required. 

The Despatches on the battle of St. Quentin con- 
ceal the fact that the Fifth Army under Gough 
received little or no support, and by their language 
also suggest (without, however, any explicit state- 
ment) , that it was reinforced, and therefore that it 
i failed partly at least through its own fault. But 
this army was left imassisted and imrelieved, and, 
in a general sense, was left alone to meet the whole 
weight of the German attack and ultimately aban- 
doned. This, the real fact, is to the discredit of the 
Commander-in-Chief. The Despatches, by their 
artful omissions and suggestions, and by their ab- 
sence of encomium, tend to transfer the blame for 
this great defeat from him to the Fifth Army. 

137 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

But Gough's army deserved all praise; they 
fought with heroic courage and endurance against 
the greatest odds. Instead of the mis-esteem, and 
perhaps the reprobation, which this official account 
has cast on them, they deserve great honour and 
still greater gratitude, neither of which they have 
ever received. For their resistance should not only 
in itself be memorable as a splendid feat of arms, 
but it saved the Allied armies. As always in the 
war, the boundless devotion and self-sacrifice of 
England's himible sons redeemed every stupidity 
and every selfishness of England's exalted chiefs. 

Between March 21 and March 29 (inclusive) 
a hundred German divisions came into action. 
G.H.Q. Intelligence admitted between eighty and 
ninety as identified, identification being a very 
stringent and exacting test, and the real ntimbers 
necessarily higher. But only thirty-five British 
and fifteen French had come into action. 

The battle of St. Quentin may perhaps be re- 
duced to these abstract terms. The two Allied 
armies, French and British, were together equal to 
the German army, but the German army was two 
or three times as large as the British. The conduct 
of the battle by the Allied commanders was such 
that the German commander was able with his 

138 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

whole army to assault the British army for a whole 
week without its receiving any substantial or oppor- 
tune assistance from the French army, and such 
that the German commander, during the same 
period, threw into the battle at the decisive point 
forces twice as large as the Allied commanders were 
able to put in the battle at the same point. The 
objective of the German commander was a place 
where, if he could have reached it, he would have 
been able to separate the Allied armies definitely, 
and so subsequently crush them each in turn. This 
objective he just failed to attain, because the por- 
tion of the British army in front of it sacrificed it- 
self to prevent him, and in so doing was utterly 
destro3^ed. 

This defeat is the natural and regular effect of 
equally natiu-al and regular causes, which always 
have been, and always will be, operative in war, and 
was not due to the weather, the Prime Minister, 
or the shortage of barbed wire, as many think and 
as others, mostly military sycophants, vociferously 
repeat to make them think it. It is commanders 
who lose battles, as it is they who win them. If 
they are to enjoy the glory of success, they must 
also bear the discredit of failure, especially if this 
failure cost the lives of two score thousand English- 

139 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

men in ten days.' The dead of the Fifth Army 
have not the voice, and the living have not the 
knowledge, to plead its case. 

Whether Foch with the Executive War Board 
(which in practice could not help becoming an In- 
ter-Allied staff imder him) could outgeneral Luden- 
dorff, is debateable, and must remain uncertain 
and vmdecided. Whether Ludendorff could out- 
general Petain and Haig is both certain and de- 
{ cided. It is not debateable, because he did. 

Other standards of Haig and Petain's general- 
\ ship exist. At equal strength the Allied defensive 
' under their direction broke down before the Ger- 
man attack; in 191 6, the Germans, not being more 
than half the strength of the Allies, could not be 
broken by the Allied offensive. Or again: Foch 
struck down the enemy at the second Mame and 
i sent him staggering back to the Hindenburg line 
with forces weaker than his; for the nimierical 
I superiority that passed from the Allies to the Ger- 
\ mans in March, 1918, did not pass back again to 
I them till September, when the amount of American 
[ effectives in the field rose to about a dozen divi- 
I sions. This gives Ludendorff 's stature; it is not 

^ In the first ten days of St. Quentin many more English- 
men were killed than in the whole Peninsular War. 

140 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

( high, but it must have been higher than that of the 

two opponents he overcame at St. Quentin. Or 

again: Ludendorff's attack could not have been 

more clearly foreseen if he had served on us a 

written notice of it, with full particulars; it requires 

, no military knowledge at all to perceive, from the 

I" map, that hardly any dispositions of the Allies 

! could have been better calculated to assist him in 

j overwhelming Gough and reaching Amiens than 

* those adopted by Petain and Haig. The military 

' student will surely come to consider St. Quentir a" 

a model of what a defeat ought to be, a sort of 

classical example, with a complete perfection of its 

own; a flawles^^ jewe' of incompetence, surpassing 

even masterpieces of the same kind like Cambrai. 

In answer to Haig's request Lord Milner and Sir 
Henry Wilson crossed over at once, and on Monday, 
March 25, met Clemenceau and Petain and Foch at 
Compiegne; Petain was there, for the Germans were 
pushing violently over the line of the Oise, the door 
to Paris, and had got one foot through this door, 
which P6tain was trying desperately to close. The 
British commander was absent at Abbeville, and 
Clemenceau vacillated between the views of Foch 
and P6tain. No agreement was reached, and on 
Tuesday there was another meeting at Doullens. 

141 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

While Lord Milner and the British generals held a 
meeting in the Mayor's room at the Town Hall, 
Poincare, Clemenceau, and the French generals 
waited outside the Town Hall. "We walked up and 
down in that little square for more than an hour," 
said M. Poincar6 later to Foch.' "You cheered us 
during this long interval by repeating to us that 
there was nothing to despair about, that we must 
make an unyielding fight for every inch of our 
sacred soil, and, at all costs, prevent the enemy 
wedging himself between us and the English." 
Clemenceau has also told us the story of that meet- 
ing.' On that "terrible day," he says, having 
known Foch many years but never seen him on the 
field of battle, "we learnt the stamp of man Foch 
is. He remained imperttirbable and confident, for 
reasons which he deduced one from another with 
the rigour of a mathematical demonstration, and 
restored the courage of us all. He evidently be- 
lieved the battle could be won, willed it, and was 
going to win it." They then all went up and joined 
the British, and a discussion on the military situa- 

* In his speech at the reception of Foch in the French 
Academy. 

^ Fragment d'Histoire, III, by Mermeix (Ollendorf, 
Paris). 

142 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

tion took place. Haig declared he could hold the 
line as far south as Amiens, but no further, and in- 
sisted on a supreme commander. Petain even now 
had only been able to bring seven French divisions 
in action, across the great gtilf that now yawned 
between the two armies ; it was imcertain whether it 
could ever be spanned. While this discussion was 
proceeding, Milner took Clemenceau (who was 
still fluctuating between P6tain and Foch) apart 
,,and proposed Foch as supreme commander. To 
jMr. Lloyd George and Sir Henry Wilson, whatever 
Jtheir shortcomings, we owe, the world owes, Foch. 

When Clemenceau took Foch aside and offered 
him the supreme command he said to him, remem- 
bering the scene in London a fortnight before — 

"You have now got the place you wanted." 

Foch answered angrily — 

"What do you mean. Prime Minister? You give 
me a lost battle and you ask me to win it. I con- 
sent, and you think you are making me a present. 
I am disregarding myself entirely when I accept 
it."^ 

Foch was not asked to extricate two unlucky or 

* "II faut toute ma candeur pour accepter dans de telles 
conditions." See Foch's own report of this dialogue in Le 
Matin, Nov. 8, 1920, 

143 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

unskilful generals. He was asked to risk his whole 
reputation to save two commanders from the con- 
sequence of errors against which he had never 
ceased to warn them, but in which they had per- 
sisted; two commanders who, to evade measures 
Foch had proposed in their own best interest, and 
for our common security, entered into an intrigue 
that a meaner spirit could not have forgiven, and 
for which he has never even reproached them. If 
his success in supreme command gives the measure 
of his genius, his acceptance of it gives the measure 
of his magnanimity. 

Von Hutier, according to plan, was due in Amiens 
on Sunday, but had been kept back by the "usual 
tenacity" of our troops, which (as Hindenburg says 
' in his lately published Aus Meinem Lehen) so often 
repaired the errors of their leaders.^ On the Tues- 
day, however, the Germans, racing along the St. 
Quentin- Amiens Road, with their artillery and 
supplies left far behind, suffering from hunger, and 
with little strength left in them, were only 12,000 

* We should do well to ponder Hindenburg's opinion of 
our High Command; it was such, he says in Aus Meinem 
Lehen, that our armies never gave him any real alarm (as 
contrasted with the French) . Whether right or wrong, there 
is no reason to think the old German warrior is expressing 
.himself otherwise than sincerely. 

144 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

or 13,000 yards away from the town. The exact 
distance, therefore, within which the Germans 
came to winning the war may perhaps be exactly 
computed in yards; it is the space along this road 
which separated them from Amiens. The meeting 
at Doullens was not very sanguine of saving it, and 
Foch outlined his plans of defence in case Paris 
had to be abandoned, and the British armies were 
driven back to the coast. On returning to London, 
Sir Henry Wilson reported to the War Cabinet 
next day, not very hopefully, that the safety of 
Amiens depended on whether the French could 
collect sufficient troops there in time to defend the 
town. For between Amiens and the upper waters 
of the Oise, a space of front well over forty miles, 
Foch, when he took over, had nothing but the frag- 
ments of the Fifth Army, broken by six days' con- 
tinuous imrelieved fighting in retreat, and seven 
French divisions,' breathless, hard pressed, and 
suffering heavily, a thin worn screen that a single 
German cavalry division would have burst, and no 
immediate help in sight but three French divisions 
/due the next day. On Sunday Petain had just 
j thought it possible that the connection between the 
I two armies might be preserved, but on Monday 
^ The 125th, 9th, loth, 62nd, 22nd, 133rd, 35th. 

145 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

both he and Haig had given up hope and were pre- 
paring to retreat, the one to the sea and the other to 
Paris. This, as Foch has since said, meant the loss 
of the war/ 

The very words of the agreement signed by 
Clemenceau and Lord Milner seem to anticipate 
separation as inevitable: he was not made general- 
issimo of one combined army, his authority was to 
co-ordinate the action of the two armies. 
/ Thus the two Commanders-in-Chief had re- 
'signed themselves to being parted, and to ceding 
Amiens to Ludendorff before it was in his hands. 
Not so Foch. As at the Mame, the more desperate 
the situation, the fiercer grew his determination 
and the more resourceful his ingenuity, as if his 
spirit, the higher misf ortimes rose, could always rise 
to a still greater height. The same old gentleman, 
now nearly three-score years and ten, who in 19 14 
had snatched the race from the Germans in the last 
few strides both in Lorraine and Champagne, was 
again to do so in Picardy in 191 8, always with the 
same calculating audacity. As at the Mame, he 
divined the point where the last thrust of which the 
exhausted enemy were capable would come, and 

^ "C'dtait la d^faite," are his own words to describe this 
projected retreat. See the issue of Le Matin of Nov. 8, 1920. 

146 



THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN 

again risked all to parry it with the same desperate 
manoeuvre. 

He was only appointed towards the middle of 
the day on Tuesday. But at a quarter to five, a few 
hours after his appointment, he managed to get 
through to Debeney, now commanding the ex- 
treme French left, on the telephone : Foch now had 
authority to command. He at once ordered De- 
beney to take all his troops out of the line farther 
south on a front of six miles, risk leaving a gap 
there, and send them up in front of Amiens. 
Against these, on the Wednesday, the last effort 
of the spent German wave broke itself. 

So Foch, as soon as he was given a chance, found 
in himself at once, then as before in 19 14, the means 
of retrieving the faults and errors of other leaders, 
and so saved them, but only just, on the edge of 
ruin. Again, as in 19 14, nothing less than the fate 
of the civilised world had for a few days trembled in 
the balance, and again he threw in the weight of his 
own indomitable will and turned the scale. Within 
six months of the day when he was given the ap- 
parently hopeless task of commanding armies de- 
feated and pressed back to positions of the most 
imminent disaster, those same armies under his 
leadership were thundering victoriously at the 

147 



AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL 

gates of the Hindenburg line, the safeguard and the 
symbol of German domination, and the leaders of 
the invincible German hosts who had awed Europe 
for half a century and very nearly overwhelmed it, 
had decided upon unconditional submission. 



148 



APPENDIX A 



149 



APPENDIX A 

The Relations between General Robertson, General Maurice, 
and Colonel Repington 

General (now Field-Marshal Sir William) Robert- 
son was, from the end of 19 15 to the beginning 
of 19 1 8, the Chief of the Imperial General 
Staff. 

General Maurice was, from the middle of 19 16 till 
General Robertson ceased to be C.I.G.S., 
Director of Military Operations; thus he was 
General Robertson's chief Staff Officer and his 
inseparable companion. 

Colonel Repington left the army many years before 
the war and became a journalist. He was the 
military correspondent of the Times till the 
end of 191 7, when he joined the Morning 
Post. 

The articles written by Colonel Repington in the 
Times have never been republished. They are al- 
most models of their kind, clear, sprightly, telling, 
almost classical journalism: he has also lately pub- 

151 



APPENDIX A 

lished a book entitled The First World War (Con- 
stable & Co.), in the form of Diaries of the war, 
very inferior to his articles, both in candour and 
style. He appears in these Diaries as a man of ex- 
treme quickness and cleverness, with gifts which, 
if he had continued in his military career, ought to 
have carried him to the very highest place; but also 
as a man of morbid vanity and egoism, that at 
times almost take him out of the limits of sanity. 
The Diaries shed a great light upon the relations 
between this journalist and otir General Staff when 
Robertson was at the head of it. The evidence 
as to the conduct of the war supplied by the 
Diaries and the articles of this journalist is worth 
examining. 

I. Relations between our General Staff 

AND RePINGTON DURING I916 AND I917 

Robertson, the Chief of our General Staff, found 
sufficient leisure to see Repington twenty times 
during the year 191 6 {Diaries — February 2 and 25; 
March 23 ; April 9 and 15 ; May 9 and 23 ; June 12 ; 
August 4 and 9; September 7, 11, and 2^; October 
3, 10, and 30 ; November 13 and 22 ; December 6 and 
30). Most of these interviews took place at the 

152 



APPENDIX A 

War Office or at Robertson's residence ; but he had 
enough time to go round to Repington's house 
(March 29 and April 9) to give him an interview; 
he is so indispensable that he sends for him (Sep- 
tember 7 and October 10), and two or three letters 
written by Robertson are quoted. Evidently this 
journalist was indispensable to Robertson in win- 
ning the war. 

From January to November, 191 7, eleven months, 
the same close relations persist between the two; 
they had seventeen interviews {Diaries — January 
10 and 12 ; February 3, 8, and 12 ; March 17 and 31 ; 
April 10 and 13; May 21 ; June 25; July 5 and 21 ; 
September 21 and 29; November 13 and 21). 

Most of these interviews are not short or casual 
meetings. Repington's accoimt of most of them 
covers page after page of his long book. It is diffi- 
cult to svimmarise them, but this might be done by 
saying that the Chief of the Imperial General Staff 
regularly, about every three weeks, reports on the 
war to the journalist: he furnishes him with a 
methodical, detailed, and comprehensive stirvey of 
it from every point of view. 

During the war a great machine of censor- 
ship, counter-espionage, and legal prosecution was 
clamped on to the population outside the Govem- 

153 



APPENDIX A 

ment service to prevent military information reach- 
ing the enemy. For example, in May, 191 6, a man 
called Bright was found guilty of obtaining the 
secret by which a material of military importance 
was being manufactured in Sheffield, though with 
no proved intention of commimicating it to the 
enemy ; the judge sentenced him to penal servitude 
for life. Inside the Government service, whether 
military or civil, even more rigorous rules existed: 
the most trifling indiscretions, the chance mention 
of the most unimportant detail, involved the most 
serious punishments. Repington is, as his Diaries 
show, indiscreet by nature; as a journalist, he is 
besides indiscreet by profession. The following are 
a few examples of what the Chief of the Imperial 
General Staff, who was in possession of all our 
essential military secrets, was telling him. 

In February, 191 7, he describes to him the situa- 
tion in Russia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and the 
working of the Derby system; in March, our posi- 
tion in France, "We should soon have forty di- 
visions in France"; in April, the Mesopotamian 
situation again; in May, the results of his visit to 
France; in June, the decision to abandon the offen- 
sive at Salonika: " . . .all our troops in France 
will attack" ; in August, all our casualties in France; 

154 



APPENDIX A 

in September, Hindenburg's plans and our own; 
the maps of the German defence; the state of our 
recruiting; the date at which Mesopotamian rail- 
ways will be finished ; and the whole Balkan situa- 
tion; in October, the position of Roumania, and our 
Home Defences; in November, of our man power; 
and in December, the same again, and our whole 
Eastern situation. 

In 19 1 7 Robertson is no less loquacious. His 
disclosures about our man-power situation are con- 
stant: "There are sixty German divisions opposiQg 
us." At times he carefully goes over every theatre 
of war for Repington (May); in Jime, he tells 
Repington about the great French mutiny, one of 
the most closely kept secrets of the war. In July, 
Repington says, " I did not think that the choice of 
Gough for this operation was good. . . . Robert- 
son was inclined to agree." He explains to Reping- 
ton how we stand in aviation and the East and in 
Russia (September); and in November, "we stud- 
ied Cambrai on large maps." Thus Robertson 
systematically disclosed to Repington all our es- 
sential military secrets. 

Every technical adviser of a Government is 
boimd to be silent about his relations to that 
Government; otherwise he could not be trusted as 

155 



APPENDIX A 

an adviser at all, for he could subject the Govern- 
ment to his will, or to the will of some one else. 
This rule of discretion is observed by civilians in 
the Civil Services to a degree very nearly ridicu- 
lous. But there is a still stronger obligation on a 
soldier; for outward, as well as real, subordination 
to a superior is the rule of his life. Without this 
framework an army would collapse. The following 
are some of the remarks the Chief of the Imperial 
General Staff was making about his superiors to 
this journalist, even when his superior happened 
to be a soldier like Lord Kitchener. In February, 
19 1 6, Robertson remarks he "hopes politicians will 
let him alone" (February 2) ; Robertson said, "He 
is not so pleased with Lord Kitchener as he was, 
and begins to think we shall not get on until 
Kitchener goes" (February 25), Lord Kitchener 
being not only his superior, as Secretary of State 
for War, but a famous soldier. About a Conference 
in France Robertson "complained bitterly that our 
ministers did not take the lead in the debates" 
(March 29). On April 9 Robertson confided to 
Repington, "It was three months since he had laid 
the whole situation before the Cabinet . . . noth- 
ing had been done ... no good could be done 
Jwith the present ministers. ... It was useless 

156 




u. & u. 



RT. HON. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 



APPENDIX A 

to have a Secretary of State for War who . . . 
Lansdowne who was too old and indefinite. Bal- 
foiar and Chamberlain no good" (April 9). A few 
days later Robertson tells Repington "recrmting 
is a farce," and both again, "What a Government 
and what a War Office' ' (April 1 5) . Again, in May, 
Robertson declares to him "it is impossible to 
carry on with Asquith at the War Office"; and in 
September, "Lloyd George declares that we have 
been all wrong in oiir offensive." A little later and 
this was their dialogue: "I said I foimd it hopeless 
to teach the politicians strategy, as they could not 
imder stand. He was of the same opinion, and had 
told Lloyd George that the latter must take his, 
Robertson's, opinions without long explanations, 
because Lloyd George to understand would have 
had to have had Robertson's experience, and no 
amoimt of explanation could make up for the want 
of it." On October 3 Robertson was complaining 
to him that "such a lot of his time had to be given 
to the Secretary of State"; a little later that "his 
time was much taken up by having to explain every 
detail to the War Committee. Lloyd George was 
always holding him personally responsible." In 
November Robertson "gnmibled at the Cabinet," 
and exclaimed, "What on earth is the War Com- 

157 



APPENDIX A 

mittee up to?" In December Robertson wrote to 
Repington that "he had had a hell of a week," and 
told him "the Cabinet have no clear ideas about 
anything . . . Milner is little help . . . they 
take up his time but do not take his advice . . . 
a little body of politicians was trying to rim the 
war themselves." 

In 19 1 7 the tone of Robertson in the Diaries is 
the same. "He, Robertson, had been very firm. 
Lloyd George had resented his attitude." "The 
discussion had been twice put off by the Cabinet" 
(January). "One had to temporise with these 
politicians" (Robertson speaking), " in this manner 
time was gained." "He did not intend to lose the 
war by giving in to the politicians" (February). 
In April he tells Repington "he had had to fight for 
Murray before the War Cabinet." "The War 
Cabinet were really not helping him . . . they 
were not really placing the war first, and when they 
did discuss it they understood little about it." 
"The War Cabinet idea about Italy was preposter- 
ous . . . the manners of the War Cabinet had not 
altered" (June). At the news of a success this is 
Robertson's sarcasm: "The War Cabinet will 
think to-morrow they have won the war" (Septem- 
ber) ; and when the Supreme War Coimcil is estab- 

158 



APPENDIX A 

lished, "We talked over the Paris plan and are both 
contemptuous." Thus the sole and exclusive 
military adviser of the Government criticised it to 
an irresponsible person like Repington, and thus 
violated his duty to his superiors. 

There is another sect of remarks to be culled from 
the Diaries. They are directed at our Allies. In 
191 6 Robertson was saying this sort of thing: "The 
French are no good for more than one more serious 
effort"; that he has dissensions with Joffre; that 
he hope'^ "to ^'ineeze Joffre"; "The Roimianian 
strategy was rotten"; "There is no love lost be- 
tween Russia and Roumania" ; "Joffre is in trouble 
again"; "The French have not kept their prom- 
ises.' ' In January, 1 9 1 7, Repington learns from him, 
"Briand has tried very hard to stampede our 
people" (January); and in March that Robertson 
"preferred Joffre to Nivelle"; in April that "the 
Russian position is rotten," and that he is "un- 
easy about French politics," which have no "stabil- 
ity." He expresses his scorn of Russia (May), and 
tells him in November that "the debacle in Italy 
is indescribable." Every Ally is dissatisfied with 
every other Ally, but every one feels it is indelicate 
to say so. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, 
who should have set an example of loyalty to them, 

159 



APPENDIX A 

did not do so ; he disparaged them to a man who was 
extremely likely to disseminate his words. 

Maurice, his chief Staff Officer, was compul- 
sorily retired from the Army in May, 1918, and 
having, like Repington, been compelled to leave 
the Army, he also, like Repington, became a 
journalist. 

The offence for which the Army Coimcil took dis- 
ciplinary measures against him in May, 19 18, was 
for carrying on an agitation in the Press ; but from 
the very first this Director of Military Operations 
seems to have been Director of Press Operations 
as well for General Robertson. "Major-General 
Fred Maurice, the new Director of Operations," 
says Repington (August 16, 19 16), "dined with me 
at the Savoy at 8. . . . He suggests that I 
should use this event as a peg on which to hang a 
comparison between the situation of May and 
August, 19 1 6. We went all through the different 
points, but as these will be in the article when it 
comes out, it is unnecessary to refer to them 
here" ; again (March 10, 1917), "saw Fred Maurice, 
who wants me to write about the question of em- 
ployment of officers of the Old and New armies." 

Maurice allowed Repington to use his office of 
D.M.O. as if it was Repington's own office, and 

160 



APPENDIX A - 

was not behind Robertson in zeal. He and Reping- 
ton "laughed a good deal about Lloyd George's 
description . . . of his visit to the front " (August 
1 6, 19 1 6). "Maurice and I are convinced that 
nothing will convince our politicians what war 
means" (February 20, 191 7). "Maurice thought 
that we ought to have a chair at some University to 
teach budding statesmen the rudiments of war" 
(September 26, 19 17). 

Maurice has praised these Diaries of Repington 
as "among the greatest diaries of our literature."^ 
Therefore Repington's accoimt of his relations with 
Maurice should be true. Robertson has never dis- 
avowed Repington's accoimt of their relations; 
besides, Maurice as a journalist is Robertson's 
champion, and bellows with rage at any criticism 
of him.^ If Repington had misrepresented his own 
relations with Robertson, Maurice would not have 
lavished praise on the Diaries. Thus Repington's 
account of his relations with Robertson should also 
be true. 

Repington cannot be blamed for these trans- 
actions. As a journalist it was his business to get 
information. His articles in the Times show what 

^ Daily News, Sept. 10, 1920. 
^ National Review, Oct., 1920. 
" 161 



APPENDIX A 

Robertson got in return. The articles are far 
superior to the Diaries: more genuine, because they 
have not been retouched to suit the subsequent 
course of events; more talented, because their 
bright clarion notes are not mixed with the jarring 
snobbery of the Diaries; more interesting and val- 
uable, because the historian can find in them the 
ideas with which Robertson guided the war. 

Repington proclaims the greatness of Robertson. 
Victory is anticipated because "Sir William Robert- 
son has a free hand" (the Times, May 8, 1916). 
Everything was wrong till "Sir William Robertson 
came," and then, but then only, "we returned 
finally to the right paths" (August 24, 1916). Vic- 
tory has been delayed but it is now in sight because 
we "are in a fair way at last, following the advice 
of competent soldiers, amongst whom General 
Cadoma and Sir William Robertson are in the 
front rank" (January 15, 19 17). The first service 
which Repington rendered to Robertson was public 
adulation. 

Repington preaches the ideas of Robertson. 
They are very interesting. Unity of Command 
is rejected. It would "risk upsetting ever5rthing 
and everybody by radical, untimely, dangerous 
changes' ' (December 18,1917). The right strategy 

162 



APPENDIX A 

I is "wearing Germany down" (November 24, 1917) ; 
and the right method is to raise more men, sixty 
divisions more, in addition to the seventy odd we 
already had. He comes back to this man-power 
question again and again: "Victory or defeat," he 
declares (May 8, 191 7), " depends upon man -power, 
and nothing else stands between us and success." 
"Will the British democracies allow history to say 
that they have failed in courage and resolution" 
(August II, 191 7), by not loading themselves with 
an army almost as great as the German, as well as 
almost the whole naval and financial burden of the 
war. This was the very point of difference between 
Robertson and the War Cabinet, who presumed to 
think there might exist a less primitive strategy. 
Repington is used by Robertson to direct the pres- 
sure of public opinion against the Cabinet. For 
this end Repington spreads the fiction (though per- 
haps he is rather dupe than deceiver) that we are 
weaker than the enemy. If Robertson can get more 
, men, we will fight, he says (August 11, 191 7), "with 
I something near an equality of forces." This, of 
. course, was untrue: the Allies had long been over- 
l whelmingly superior to the Central Powers. The 
Allied soldiers had never been able to use the 
very great preponderance the Allied politicians had 

163 



APPENDIX A 

given them. Thus the second service which Rep- 
ington renders to Robertson is a press agitation in 
favour of Robertson's ideas. 

Repington denounces Robertson's civiUan supe- 
riors. He unintermittently criticises ' ' amateurish- 
ness in the Cabinet and Defence Committee, the 
harassing and hampering interference of poh- 
ticians" (February 8, 191 6). "The Government 
allows . . . incompetent administrators to mis- 
handle" the army (May 8, 1916). "The Cabinet of 
the war period can claim no merit . . . except 
that of letting things slide" (August 24, 19 16). 
They suffer from the "hopeless incapacity of ama- 
teurs to conduct a business of which they know 
nothing" (same date). "It is known, of course, 
that every politician thinks he knows all about 
war" (August 25, 1916). "The politician is for 
ever fimiing and fretting and trying to interfere" 
(same date). "Allied politicians would neither 
acknowledge the sphere nor appreciate the func- 
tion of strategy' ' (July 15,1917). "A party in the 
late Cabinet ... no hesitation in assigning the 
main responsibility for the prolongation of the war 
to them" (same date). He refers to "inefficiency 
of our War Cabinets' ' (August 4,1917). "It would 
have been better if Mr. Lloyd George had adhered 

164 



APPENDIX A 

to the facts" (November 17, 1917); and so on. 

Repington echoes the abuse Robertson poiired in 
his ear, as far as the Censor would allow. His elo- 
quent advocacy was intended to make our states- 
men, in the mind of the public, responsible for 
Robertson's inability to conduct the war, an in- 
ability proved by the incontrovertible and quite 
plain fact that, as soon as he left, it ended in our 
favour almost at once. Thus the third service 
which Repington renders to Robertson was public 
denunciation of Robertson's superiors, the Cabinet, 
for the advantage of Robertson. 

Perhaps all this evidence from the Diaries and 
the articles can be summarised in this way. Rep- 
ington was the instrimient, the very effective in- 
strimient, of Robertson and his assistant Maurice 
in the Press. Robertson criticised to Repington 
the Government of which he was the technical 
military adviser, and thus violated his duty to his 
superiors; disclosed to him all our essential military 
secrets ; and disparaged our Allies to him. Reping- 
ton's services to Robertson were public adulation: 
press agitation in favour of Robertson's ideas; and 
public denunciation of Robertson's superiors, to 
the advantage of Robertson. Thus the closest con- 
nection existed between them. 

165 



APPENDIX A 

II. Robertson and the Morning Post 
Prosecution 

Repington's article, publishing to the world ottr 
military secrets for the purpose of overturning the 
Government, appeared in the Morning Post of 
February ii, 191 8. He and the editor of the 
Morning Post, Mr. Gwynne, were convicted and 
fined at Bow Street on February 2 1 . Now, Robert- 
son had been present at every meeting of the 
Supreme War Cotincil, and knew quite well that 
Repington had disclosed our military plans to 
the enemy. In his Diaries (February 26, 19 18), 
Repington prints the following letter he received 
from Robertson: 

February 25, 191 8. 

My Dear Repington, 
I shall return to London in about a week's 
time, after which I shall have a good deal of in- 
spection work to do, but I will not fail to arrange a 
talk with you. My present feelings are that I am 
more or less retired from the Public Service, except 
so far as my own particular command is con- 
cerned. I am heartily sick of the whole sordid busi- 
ness of the past month. Like yourself, I did what I 
thought was best in the general interest of the coun- 
try, and the result has been exactly as I expected 

166 



APPENDIX A 

would be the case. I am in no way surprised at the 
turn events have taken; in fact I felt sure from the 
first that they would be as they have proved to be. 
The country has just as good a Government as it 
deserves to have. I feel that your sacrifice has been 
great, and that you have a difficult time in front of 
you. But the great thing is to keep on a straight 
course, and then one may be sure that good will 
eventually come out of what may now seem to be 

evil. , 

Yours very truly, 

W. Robertson. 

The meaning of this letter is not quite clear, and 
this is perhaps less due to a deliberate purpose than 
Robertson's inability to express general ideas, 
which is usual. But Repington treats it as a letter 
of consolation at his conviction, and reports that 
at his first interview with Robertson (March 15), 
after this conviction, Robertson said, "few, except 
Gwynne and I, had stood by him." In any event, 
this letter is too inimitably in the style of Robertson 
to be anything but genuine. From its text two sets 
of observations arise. 

The first set of observations are these: 
First— Thsit Robertson considered Repington 
to have been doing the work of a patriot in 
167 



APPENDIX A 

publishing the article for which he was prose- 
cuted. For Repington is treated as having 
"done what he thought best in the interest 
of the country." 
Secondly. — That he had acted nobly ("your 
sacrifice has been great") and rightly ("the 
great thing is to keep on a straight course"). 
Therefore Robertson congratulates Reping- 
ton on his conduct, as the noble work of 
a patriot, and condoles with him on his 
conviction. 

Maurice also writes {Diaries, February 24) that 
he has "been ordered not to talk to him about the 
war" (Robertson has left the War Office), but that 
"I have the greatest admiration for your deter- 
mination and courage." 

Repington and Robertson had interviews of the 
friendliest kind on March 15, March 25, April 3, 
April II, May 10, July 20, August 15, October 25, 
1 9 1 8 . Repington's behavioiu* did not diminish but 
increased the cordiality of their friendship. 

The second set of observations, to which Rob- 
ertson's letter dated February 25 gives rise, are 
these: 

First. — Robertson writes as if he and Repington 
had been engaged in a common enterprise: 
168 



APPENDIX A 

"Like yourself, I did what I thought was 
best." 

Secondly. — Robertson writes as if it was rather 
an improper enterprise: "The sordid busi- 
ness of the past month." 

Thirdly. — Robertson writes as if this enterprise 
had started about January 25 — "the past 
month"; the Session of the Supreme War 
Coimcil in question in Repington's article 
began a few days after January 25. 

Fourthly. — Robertson writes as if the object 
of this common enterprise had been to up- 
set the Government, but that it had failed: 
"The country had just as good a govern- 
ment as it deserved to have"; "The result 
has been exactly as I expected would be the 
case." 

Fifthly. — Robertson writes as if the publication 
of the Morning Post article had been part of 
this enterprise: "Your sacrifice has been 
great." 

Therefore this letter strongly suggests that dur- 
ing the previous month Robertson and Repington 
had been collaborating in a joint enterprise, called 
"sordid" by Robertson himself, of which the ob- 
ject was to upset the Government, and that the 
publication of Repington's article had been part of 

169 



APPENDIX A 

this enterprise. This is the supposition which the 
language of Robertson's letter almost exactly fits. 

A violent dispute had arisen between Robertson 
and the War Cabinet on the Versailles decisions in 
the second week of February. On Thursday, Feb- 
ruary 14, Mr. Lloyd George had decided to replace 
Robertson by Sir Henry Wilson as Chief of the 
Imperial General Staff. 

Repington's article disclosing the Versailles de- 
cisions and the military plans of the Alliance ap- 
peared during the second week of February, on 
February 1 1 ; he invited the House of Commons to 
withdraw their confidence in Mr. Lloyd George be- 
cause he had participated in these decisions and 
formed these plans. 

On February 5 the then leader of the Opposition, 
Mr. Asquith, had asked the Government what the 
Versailles decisions had been, but had been refused 
all information. Not knowing what they were, he 
could not make them the groimd for attack on the 
Government. On February 12 the business of the 
House was to be the Debate on the Address, which 
always gives the Opposition the opportimity of 
attacking the Government on any grotmd it likes 
to choose. Repington's article, on February 11, 
gave Mr. Asquith the knowledge he required, and, 

170 



APPENDIX A 

armed with it, he attacked Mr. Lloyd George on 
February 12, but without success. 

The Repington article, therefore, was, in fact, 
used inside the House of Commons against the 
Government at a moment when Robertson was 
quarrelling with the Government, and he was on 
the point of ceasing to be Chief of the Imperial 
General Staff. 

III. Repington's Informant 

Who gave Repington the information about our 
military plans which he disclosed to the public, and 
therefore to the enemy, in his Morning Post article 
of February 11? 

Repington has given an explanation in his Dia- 
ries. An account of the debate and decisions of the 
Supreme War Council was given to him, so he de- 
clares, by Clemenceau on February 3. This he 
reproduced in his Morning Post article. In his 
Diaries there is a long accoimt of his interview with 
Clemenceau, and various opinions and items of 
information are put in the mouth of Clemenceau. 
But it is difficult to accept this explanation. 

Here I must very reluctantly thrust myself for- 
ward. I acted as interpreter at the debate in ques- 

171 



APPENDIX A 

tion, as I did in nearly all inter- Allied discussions at 
Versailles while there. Any of the members of the 
Supreme War Coimcil, or of the Military Repre- 
sentatives, or of the Executive War Board, and 
several other committees, would speak at full tilt 
for four or five minutes in English or French, and 
then halt. It was then my duty as the interpreter, 
with the help of a few hurried notes, at once to 
translate all they had said into the opposite lan- 
guage. This used to go on for hours, so that the 
interpreter more or less committed the whole de- 
bate to memory. As amendments in either lan- 
guages, French or English, were introduced into 
the bilingual resolutions submitted, it was my duty 
as interpreter and secretary to alter the bilingual 
text; so that I became very familiar with the text 
of their decisions. As assistant secretary it was 
my duty on that particular occasion subsequently 
to draft the minutes of the meeting; and jointly 
with the secretary, I also had control of all these 
written records of the Supreme War Council, 
resolutions, minutes, decisions, and all copies. As 
assistant secretary, too, previously to the meeting, 
all the information on which the resolutions were 
foimded had passed before me, and all dociiments 
returned into the joint custody of the secretary and 

172 



APPENDIX A 

myself. The part I played was, therefore, very 
subordinate and, if difficult, rather mechanical. 
But my knowledge of this debate and decisions (as 
of nearly all inter-AlHed discussions) was not an 
impresson acquired by hearsay, or as a casual 
hearer; it was an impression stamped into me by a 
process drastic and multiple in itself, and arduous 
and exhausting to me, and giving me a knowledge of 
it minute, complete, and profound, far greater than 
that possessed by any of the great Olympians (who 
never Hstened to each other with anything like the 
attention I was compelled to use), and checked by 
the possession of all necessary documents. This 
knowledge was still clear and exact when Reping- 
ton's Morning Post article appeared on February 
II, and even now it is not altogether effaced. 
This knowledge prevents me accepting his ex- 
planation. 

This close pursuit and reproduction of a speaker's 
words also constitute a microscopic examination 
of his mind, especially when the same interpreter 
usually acts for the same people, and this study 
is also reinforced by reading at leisure documents 
drafted by these speakers. The speaker, however 
eminent, places his mind as if under a powerful 
magnifying lens for the observation of the inter- 

173 



APPENDIX A 

preter. I mention this because this almost involun- 
tary study is the base of most of my opinions. 

No doubt an interview took place with Clemen- 
ceau, and some parts of Repington's explanation 
look real, but as a whole the account can hardly be 
accepted as quite genuine, for two reasons : 

First. — The views put in the mouth of Clemen- 
ceau, and the views expressed in the Morn- 
ing Post article, are not the views of M. 
Clemenceau. 

Secondly. — The items of information put in the 
mouth of M. Clemenceau, and still more the 
items of information divulged by Repington 
in the Morning Post could not be obtained 
from M. Clemenceau, but only from records 
of the Supreme War Council, which were 
not then in the hands of M. Clemenceau. 

But the views attributed to M. Clemenceau and 
the views expressed in the Morning Post were the 
views of General Robertson; and particular copies 
of the records from which alone Repington could 
obtain his information were in the hands of General 
Robertson. 

The evidence of this contention must necessarily 
be elaborate and detailed, and can hardly be set out 
here. 

174 



APPENDIX A 

While the Session took place at Versailles, 
Robertson and Maurice stayed in Paris; so did 
Repinr^hon. 

When Repington was prosecuted, Maurice is 
mentioned by the Press as having attended at the 
police court during the opening of the case for the 
Crown. 

Therefore, as it is difficult to accept Repington 's 
explanation that he obtained his information from 
the French source he mentions ; as the only possible 
source of his information was copies of the records 
of the Session of the Supreme War Council in the 
hands of General Robertson ; as he expressed in his 
Morning Post article the views of General Robert- 
son; as, in his letter dated February 25, Robertson 
uses language strongly suggesting that the publica- 
tion of the article was intended to assist Robertson 
in upsetting Mr. Lloyd George, and it was, in fact, 
so used in the House of Commons ; these considera- 
tions, taken together with the previous and sub- 
sequent relations existing between, form a mass of 
circumstantial evidence pointing with imdeviating 
finger at General Robertson himself as having sup- 
plied Repington with the information he published. 

If all Robertson's Staff Ofhcers were as eager 
Press agents as his chief Staff Officer, Maurice, 

175 



APPENDIX A 

there could be no difficulty in doing so. Almost all 
the papers officially sent by the Military Represen- 
tatives at Versailles to Robertson in London in 
December and January must have been seen by 
Repington, or numerous entries in his Diaries would 
be impossible; and they could not have been seen 
by him unless Robertson was willing they should be. 

To this conclusion, so damaging to Robertson, 
converge the many forms of proof supplied, quite 
involuntarily, by Repington ; it is Repington's des- 
tiny to give evidence, in the intoxication of his 
vanity, against the very party in whose favour he 
comes forward to testify. 

If this supposition, that Robertson was the in- 
formant, seems shocking, it is no more shocking 
than the fact that Robertson approved of Reping- 
ton's disclosures, both by his words and his acts. 
The difference in culpability between applauding 
and instigating such conduct is faint and shadowy, 
if it exists at all. The same censure applies to 
Maurice, who is so hardened in these practices, 
that even now he writes as if unconscious that dis- 
closure of one's country's military plans to the 
enemy in time of war is wrongful, however obtained 
and whatever the object.' 

^ See his article in National Review, Oct., 1920. 

176 



APPENDIX A 

IV. General Conclusions 

/ One more incident in the relations of Robertson, 
•' Repington, and Maurice, is worth mentioning. 

On May 6, Maurice wrote a letter to the Press, 
t which was published, and which accused the Prime 
Minister of being untruthful. It led the Army 
\ Council, on May 12, to place him forthwith on 
retired pay. On May 9, the Maurice letter was dis- 
cussed in the House of Commons, which again sup- 
ported Mr. Lloyd George, just as it had supported 

him on February 12 and 20, in spite of the Reping- 

J. 

f ton article. On May 10, the trio, Robertson, Mau- 
I rice, and Repington, dined together (Diaries, May 
t 10). 

Repington does not record their feelings or con- 
versation at this melancholy feast, but, by way of 
showing what I believe their motives to have been, 
I will imagine what it was. 

They deplored that the Repington article had 
failed to upset Mr. Lloyd George in February : if it 
had, Mr. Asquith would again have been Prime 
Minister, and he never woiild have substituted Sir 
Henry Wilson for Sir William Robertson, as chief 
of the Imperial General Staff; they also deplored 
that the Maurice letter had failed to upset Mr. 

177 



APPENDIX A 

Lloyd George the day before: if it had, Mr. As- 
quith would again have been Prime Minister, and 
he might have dismissed Sir Henry Wilson, and 
restored Robertson. The text itself of the Maurice 
letter affords some evidence of this. He loudly dis- 
claims acting with or for any one else, and an- 
nounces that he speaks only for himself. But he 
protests too much. If this was strictly true, it prob- 
ably would not have occurred to him to mention it. 
Either of these two little coups d'etat would have 
made Robertson Chief of the Imperial General 
Staff and Maurice Director of Military Operations 
till we lost the war, and satisfied the personal feud 
of Repington with Sir Henry Wilson.' These were 
the real motives, in the time of their country's ex- 
treme peril, of this trio, who still persist in address- 
ing the public as if the spirit of military duty was 
incarnate in themselves and in themselves alone. 
Maiu"ice in this respect is egregious. In spite of be- 
ing compulsorily retired from the army for a breach 
of the regulations, he writes articles as an authority 
on the conduct becoming an officer.'' Though his 
offence was the discussion of military affairs in the 

^ This personal feud and its origin, were fully discussed in 
an article in the Observer, in 191 8. 

^ See The National Review, Oct. issue, 1920, p. 196. 

178 



APPENDIX A 

Press, he takes it upon himself to rebuke "subordi- 
nates at Versailles," among whom he knows by some 
extraordinary chance that "gossip was rife," for 
this indulgence/ His effrontery is sublime. 
^ See same article in National Review. 



179 



APPENDIX B 



i8l 



APPENDIX B 

Unity of Command in igiy 

I WAS personally a witness of the events of the 
spring of 191 8 in which Sir Douglas Haig declined 
to obey the decisions of the Supreme War Council. 
There is an almost exact parallel between these 
events and those of 19 17, as given in the despatch 
of the French Prime Minister, M. Briand, dated 
March 6, 191 7, to Mr. Lloyd George, and herein 
set out below. 

This despatch is quoted in several French semi- 
official accounts, such as Major de Civrieux's 
VOffensivede 19 17 (Garnier, Paris), and Fragments 
d'Histoire, III, by Mermeix (OUendorf, Paris). 

M. Briand does not set out Sir Douglas Haig's 
letter of March 4, 191 7, to Nivelle; but this letter 
was evidently, from his analysis of it, confused and 
almost unintelligible. While Sir Douglas refused 
to obey the decisions of the Calais Conference, he 
evidently avoided any justification of this refusal 
by introducing irrelevant topics ; in these respects 

183 



APPENDIX B 

it is exactly like his letter of March 2, 191 8, to 
Foch and the Executive War Board. The historian 
who wishes to gauge the intellectual calibre of 
Haig (and he will never iinderstand the war other- 
wise) should collect all his personal communications 
and memoranda with the War Cabinet and the 
Supreme War Council, and read them. 

In one of the above works, V Offensive de 191 7, 
a French Military Attache in London, Berthier de 
Sauvigny, is quoted as officially reporting a con- 
versation of two hours between himself and Mr. 
Lloyd George, in Colonel Hankey's room in Lon- 
don on February 15, 1917: in it Mr. Lloyd George 
assures him of the eagerness of the War Cabinet 
for a single supreme command, though "the pres- 
tige of Marshal Haig with the Army and the Eng- 
lish people make it difficult to subordinate him to a 
French Commander." The anonymous author of 
Fragments d'Histoire — who is, however, not very 
reliable — declares that after the receipt of this 
despatch of M. Briand, Mr. Lloyd George told the 
French he was not strong enough to compel Haig. 
This is what Briand asks for: "Le marechal Haig 
doit ^tre mis en demeure " ; but it was certainly not 
done, and a compromise, dictated by Haig, adopted 
in London, March 13. 

184 



APPENDIX B 

The Despatch of M. Briand to Mr. 
Lloyd George: — 

March 6, 191 7. 

General Nivelle has just communicated to the 
Comite de Guerre Frangais, the memorandum of 
March 2nd sent by Marshal Haig to General 
Robertson. This document gave rise, on the part 
of the Comite de Guerre Frangais, to the following 
remarks : — 

On February 27, immediately after the Confer- 
ence of Calais, General Nivelle sent a letter to 
Marshal Haig which reached him the same day, 
in which 

1 . He confirmed the plan of operations and the 
date of the offensive. 

2. He asked for the orders given to the British 
forces. 

3. He asked for the organization of the Etat- 
Major of the English Mission, the creation of which 
had been decided upon at the second meeting of the 
Conference of Calais. Six days later, March 4, 
Marshal Haig replied by a letter in which he merely 
stated : — 

I . His opinion on the subject of the German re- 
pulse (repli) on the Ancre. 

185 



APPENDIX B 

2. His hypothetical fears on the subject of a 
German attack in Flanders. 

3. His doubts of the utility to the G.Q.G. 
Frangais, of the Organized Mission, and of the 
possibility of being ready to attack on the date set. 

To this letter was attached a copy of the note 
sent by him to General Robertson to be submitted 
to the War Committee. 

From this note resulted : — 

1. The determination not to accept the deci- 
sions of the Conference of Calais. 

2. The constant tendency to question again the 
plan of operations accepted by the Conference, 
where the chiefs of the English and French Govern- 
ments were assembled, furnished with the full 
powers of the two Governments, and of their War 
Committees — a tendency all the more dangerous 
as the time for the offensive drew near. 

3. A marked tendency to give up taking the 
initiative of the operations, manifested by making 
much of all that the Germans might do or plan, 
without reflecting that we might profit by the same 
advantages. For example: i*'" alinea du A; i"^ 
du B, tout le D, enfin tout le F qui envisage au 
dernier alinea. The reduction of the British co- 
operation and even the abandonment of the plan. 

186 



APPENDIX B 

The general spirit of this document indicates a 
feeHng opposed to the offensive. 

The plan ascribed to the Germans of attacking 
in the North is possible, but rests on no certain 
basis; for that matter, one can make numerous 
hypotheses of the same sort in regard to all the 
points of the Front : Rheims, Soissons, Champagne, 
Lorraine, Alsace. 

Only one real fact exists, which existed already 
at the time of the resolutions of Calais, and that is 
the repulse (repli) on the Ancre. 

General Nivelle has decided in consequence — 

1. That no change will be made, unless new 
events arise, in the plan of general operations. 

2 . That only the secondary attack on the Ancre, 
of which the end is partly attained, was suppressed, 
thus creating a release {disponihilite) of about 6 
divisions which for the moment will be left at the 
disposal of Marshal Haig. The abandonment of 
this attack is calculated to strengthen the attack on 
Arras and to hasten its preparation, since there is 
now only one front of attack to provide with stores 
and munitions. 

The repeated tendency of Marshal Haig to avoid 
{se derober) the instructions given to him, to ques- 
tion incessantly the offensive itself, the plan of 

187 



APPENDIX B 

operations, and that at a moment so near the time 
of execution, would render the co-operation of the 
British forces illusory, and make impossible the 
exercise of a sole command. 

Consequently, Marshal Haig should be obliged, 
without further delay, to conform to the decisions 
of the Conference of Calais, and to the instructions 
given to him by General Nivelle. 

It is important, moreover, that General Nivelle 

should have as soon as possible the use of a qualified 

intermediary between him and the English forces, 

in order to be advised of the disposition of these 

forces and to communicate his instructions to them. 

/ The Comite de Guerre Franqais urges that General 

I Wilson, who has already acted in a similar capacity 

I at the beginning of the campaign, be appointed to 

I this position. 

In case the War Committee should not see the 
way to remedy, without delay, the serious disad- 
vantages cited, it would not be possible for the 
French Commander-in-Chief to secure unity of 
operation on the western front, and the French 
Government, to its great regret, could only deplore 
this situation. 



APPENDIX G 



189 





Keystone View Co., Inc. 



COLONEL CHARLES REPINGTON 



APPENDIX C 

General Gough's Confidential Report 

The despatches of Sir Douglas Haig on the 
battle of St. Quentin conceal the fact that the 5th 
Army under Gough received Httle or no support, 
and, by their language, also suggest (without, 
however, any exphcit statement) that he was 
properly reinforced, and therefore that it failed 
through its own fault. But this Army was left 
unassisted, unreHeved, and, in a general sense, was 
left alone to meet the whole weight of the German 
attack, and abandoned. This, the real fact, is to 
the discredit of Sir Douglas Haig. The Despatches, 
by their artful omissions and suggestions, and ab- 
sence of any encomium, tend to transfer the blame 
for this great defeat from him to the 5th Army. 

But the 5th Army incurred no blame. On the 
contrary, they fought with heroic courage and en- 
durance against the greatest odds. Instead of the 
mis-esteem, and perhaps reprobation, which this 
official account has cast on them, they deserve great 

191 



APPENDIX C 

honour and still greater gratitude, neither of which 
they have ever received. For their resistance 
shoiild not only in itself be memorable as a splendid 
feat of arms, but it saved the Allied armies. 

My version of the events, especially the late and 
insufficient assistance we received from the French, 
as against the official version, was called into ques- 
tion by several critics when I published it. The 
honour and credit of Gough's Army seemed to me 
to be sufficiently important for me to produce my 
evidence. As to whether he was adequately sup- 
ported or not, there could be no better witness than 
Gough himself. I therefore applied to General 
Gough for permission to publish extracts from his 
confidential Report on the battle, made for and 
sent to G.H.Q., and obtained his permission. The 
following are the relevant extracts: — 

Extracts from General Gough's Confidential 
Report on the Battle of St. Quentin. 

"The 5th Army consisted of fourteen Infantry 
divisions and three Cavalry divisions. 

" Preparations : — 

" It was evident before March i that a great 
attack was pending on the 5th Army. 

192 



APPENDIX C 

"I held several conferences with Corps Com- 
manders in which the situation was clearly laid 
before them. 

"It was pointed out that within a seventy-five 
mile radius of the centre of the army front lay some 
thirty to fifty German divisions, who could con- 
centrate on the army by road and rail in three 
days. 

"The utmost energy was urged on all corps to 
get on with the necessary defensive works of all 
kinds, and time for rest and training was reduced 
to a minimtmi. 

• • • • • 

" The Battle:— 

" At or just before 5 A.M., March 2 1 , a very heavy 
bombardment opened all along the army front. 

"By 5.15 A.M. all corps received orders — 'Man 
Battle Stations.' 

"Up to 8.30 A.M. no infantry action was 
reported, but bombardment was heavy. 

" Between 9.40 A.M. and 10.30 a.m. reports came 
in of hostile attacks. 



13 



193 



APPENDIX C 

"Between 10.30 A.M. and 11.30 a.m. reports 
came in showing that the attack was general along 
the whole army front. 



"Between 11.30 a.m. and 1.30 p.m. it became 
evident that the hostile attack was being made in 
overwhelming masses along nearly all the army 
front. 

"In fact it was becoming evident to me about 
this time and during the afternoon, that I would 
shortly have to make a decision between fighting a 
decisive battle with the 5th Army or carrying out a 
delaying action, which, while inflicting heavy loss 
on the enemy, held him up as long as possible, but 
always maintained an intact, even though battered 
and thin line, between him and the arrival of the 
General Reserves, in the hands of the British and 
French Chiefs. 

"I was aware that, from the British sources, I 
could only expect one division at a time, at intervals 
of seventy-two hours, and that the first to arrive 
could not be expected for seventy-two hours. 

/ "The French division, after the first two, would 

I not arrive any faster. 

194 



APPENDIX C 

" Such Reserves were bound to appear too slowly 
to enable me to maintain my whole front of forty 
miles for several days with the divisions at my dis- 
posal, when that front was being attacked along 
its whole front and when every division I possess 
was being hard pressed and would require relief 
in two or three days. 

"In the case of the French, these divisions would 
be arriving without their guns, their transport, or 
^ any sufficient signal or other staff organisation. 

"By nightfall, March 21st, the situation on the 
army front was as follows: — 

^ , • • 

"Thus the Army front on the battle zone of 
forty miles remained intact except for three serious 
breaches and one minor breach. 

^ , • • 

"The situation as the result of one day's fighting 
against immense odds and holding such a long line 
so thinly under the very adverse conditions of a 
dense fog, might have been considered very satis- 

195 



APPENDIX C 

factory if it had not been for the fact that very few 
Reserves were at hand to fill the gaps, to organise 
counter-attacks, or to sustain the struggle for six 
or eight more days, and that the losses had been 
severe. 

"Friday, March 22: — 

"This morning a thick mist again enveloped the 
battlefield, rendering all observation for more than 
fifty yards impossible. 

"By II A.M. it became apparent that the enemy 
was continuing his attack as heavily as ever. 

"During the rest of the day heavy fighting con- 
tinued along the whole army front. 

" In consequence of this situation, the exhaustion 
of the troops, the inadequacy of their ntimbers to 
hold seriously the length of front involved, and the 
knowledge that, except for one French division and 
some French cavalry in the 3rd Corps area, no 
support could possibly reach the fighting line before 
Simday morning, the 24th inst., I decided on a 
further withdrawal behind the Somme. " 

(This French division, of which the distinguish- 

196 



APPENDIX C 

ing niimber is not given by General Gough, must, 
I think, be the 125th, who arrived during the night 
and, in company with a few companies of our i8th 
Division, coimter-attacked at 6 a.m. on Satiu-day 
on the Crozat Canal, but without success. The 
1st Division of French cavalry seems to have been 
dismounted and amalgamated with it. These were 
the first French troops to take part in the battle, 
but were, I believe, without guns, and had only 50 
rounds of ammunition a man.) 

"Accordingly, the following Army Orders were 
issued by II p.m., 22nd inst. 



"Information from G.H.Q. informed me that 
two French divisions and one French cavalry divi- 
sion might be expected about Noyon during the 
coiu-se of Friday night, 22nd -inst., and the 8th 
British Division would be detraining at Nesle and 
west of it during Saturday and Simday night. 

"None of these troops could be expected in the 
firing-line, and then only gradually, till Saturday 
afternoon and Simday morning, when the first 
brigade of the 8th Division was able to take post 
along the line of the Somme. 

"Information also reached me that the 35th 

197 



APPENDIX C 

British Division was to join me, but this was not 
due till after the arrival of the 8th. 

" Saturday, March 23 : — 

"During the early hours of the morning reports 
arrived saying that the enemy had forced the 
passage of the Crozat Canal. 

" During the day heavy fighting again continued 
along the whole of the army front. 

"At about 4 P.M., 3rd Corps reported that the 
French troops were coming into action — one regi- 
ment, 9th Division, south of Flavy le Martel, and 
two regiments of the same division — to meet the 
threat on the left flank, in the direction of Golan- 
court; while the loth Division was coming up still 
farther to the west and filling what was tending to 
become a gap between the 3rd Corps and the right 
of the i8th Corps." 

(Thus the first reinforcements of any kind that 
ever reached Gough were these imits of the French 
9th and loth Divisions, late on Saturday afternoon, 
and the other French division mentioned before, 
which I believe was the 125th French Division.) 



198 



APPENDIX C 

"During the night of the 23rd-24th, the 8th 
Division commenced to reach the Hne of the river 
{i. e. the Somme), coming up as they detrained. 

" Nothing in the way of a detailed reconnaissance 
or deHberate occupation of the position was possi- 
ble; nevertheless, this division successfully got into 
position, an operation for which it deserves much 
credit. 

" I may here say that in all the subsequent heavy 
fighting the division showed its fine spirit and good 
training to great advantage. It is doubtful, 
however, whether the junction with the i8th Corps 
was ever satisfactorily established." 

(This 8th British Division was the first and only 
British reinforcement that ever reached Gough.) 

"Sunday, March 24:— 

"During this day the enemy continued his pres- 
sure on the 3rd Corps and the French, who were 
now coming into this area. . . . 

• • • • • 

"As the command passed, from this date, to 
the 3rd French Army, I do not propose here to 
deal further in detail with the operations of the 
3rd Corps. ..." 

199 



APPENDIX C 

(The new French troops coming into this area 
on Sunday were the 62nd and elements of the 
22nd Division, besides those that came in on Satur- 
day.) 

"By 2 P.M. the right of the 8th Division had 
been pushed back west of Potte. . . . 

"During the afternoon of 24th and night of 
24th-25th, some brigades of 35th Division arrived, 
I beheve, and went into Hne north of the Somme 
imder the orders of the 7th Corps." 

(After the 8th British Division, these brigades of 
the 35th Division were the only other British troops 
to reach Gough, but on Monday morning these were 
taken away from him, and passed under Byng.) 

" Monday,"March 25 : — 

"Early on this morning the French Command, 
under orders of General FayoUe, took over up to 
the Somme." 

• • • • • 

(Fayolle even then only had the 133rd French 
Division, which came into action on Monday, 

200 



APPENDIX C 

besides the French divisions that had been heavily 
engaged on Saturday and Sunday, viz. 125th, 9th, 
lOth, 62nd, and 22nd; not more than six in all, and 
these certainly insufficiently equipped, and prob- 
ably by no means complete; on Tuesday, the 
French 35th, and on Wednesday the French 56th, 
162nd, and 1 66th came into action: ten French 
divisions only, therefore, came into action during a 
continuous battle lasting one week. 

During that week of continuous fighting, the 
only British reinforcement that reached Gough 
was the 8th Division. 

These French divisions were the framework 
of the 3rd French Army imder Humbert, and the 
1st \mder Debeney, FayoUe being commander of 
the Army group.) 



201 



4--^<y sslrtp ^>i 



SHOWING 



ON OF ALL ALLIED DIVISIONS IN FRANCE 



IN THE THIRD WEEK OF MARCH, 1913. 
BEFORE THE BATTLE OF ST. QUENTlN. 



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.' DUCHY \ T 

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